


But Then Again, There's You

by OceanMelon



Series: Honey, That's Alright [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bands, Alternate Universe - Celebrity, Alternate Universe - Music, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Getting Back Together, Keith (Voltron) is a Mess, Long Distance Relationship, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Singer!Shiro, Songfic, bassist!keith, broganes, drummer!allura, guitarist!matt, guitarist!shiro, physics teacher!lance, songwriter!Allura, songwriter!keith, teacher!lance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2019-09-17 12:43:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16974780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OceanMelon/pseuds/OceanMelon
Summary: Six years ago Keith and Lance managed to accidentally break each other's hearts, going their separate ways to opposite sides of the country. And now Keith isn't that same broke, aspiring bass-player he was. His band made it big and he's doing national tours, living his dream. Lance isn't that same romantic college student on the best summer vacation of his life but a responsible high school teacher, a real adult who pays his taxes and everything.Back in contact again for only a few weeks and relationship still untitled and unsure, Keith's tour takes him to New York and to Lance. And with so much time in each other's space, maybe there's a chance for healing.[No previous knowledge of the series necessary because ^that^ is basically a summary]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again, my lovelies.  
> We're back with more of this AU with less than 24hrs until season 8 drops. I haven't actually finished the whole fic yet. Still got a chapter to go. But I'm gonna start giving out the chapters for you and just try to get it done before I run out of buffer.
> 
>  **For those reading the series out of order:** I think you'll be okay with this one. You might have to just suspend your disbelief a couple of times, but it should, overall, still make sense. 
> 
> Title is from ['Rango'](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7tsybcupk8&t=0s&list=PLdjcZbWbiPbKyER1kXEtGiu8zJTXFtCso&index=9) by Catfish and the Bottlemen (That's right, we're back with CatB again :p) I'm linking you an acoustic cover by The Swoons because it's as close as I can find to the way I'm imagining Keith playing it as he writes it throughout the fic. But [HERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNw8HQbhHhg) is the CatB album version as well, just in case you want it.

Shiro is, by nature, a helpful person. There are, however, times when he should really learn to curb that instinct. Like when he mentions Acxa might be good for this next video.

Allura’s song is being released as the third and final single from the new album and, in turn, needs an accompanying video clip. Of course, it turns out Acxa _is_ perfect for the role, or so Allura thinks. And nobody is going to win against Allura when she’s set her mind on something. No amount of difficulties — no matter how many times Blaytz throws his hands up in the air crying, “But think of her fees!” — Allura is decided.

The only problem, as far as Allura is concerned, is that Acxa -- real name: Emily Kim; world renowned model and current face of Kral Zera Cosmetics -- lives and works in New York. A problem solved with no more than a few little tweaks to the dates of the next tour.

And Lance, still ignorant of most of this and expecting this new message from Keith (a message which turns out to be a whole, healthy explanation of: ‘ _I’ll be in NYC next week. Can I stay with you?_ ’) to be more of their usual banter, is more than a little surprised to find that things have moved so far along without a single input from him.

“I’m just saying,” he says to Keith’s tiny image on his phone as he speeds down the motorway into the city, “I would have liked to have been told a little earlier.”

They’ve already been doing this long distance almost-relationship thing for a few weeks already and, somewhere along the line, they discovered that if Keith got up an hour earlier, they could FaceTime the entirety of Lance’s forty minute drive into work. Lance even invested in a little dashboard stand to hold his phone so he could properly see Keith’s face while they talked.

“Do you not want me staying with you?” Keith replies, voice soft and uncertain. “I can still get a hotel. I think.”

“No, Keith, I--” He wipes a hand down his face in exasperation and nearly swerves into the wrong lane. “Shit! Jesus fucking— _I almost just died_ …” He takes a deep breath. “Fuck, Keith, I don’t have a problem with you staying with me. I guess. I mean, we’re not exactly-- but I have missed you. It’s only… Are you sure this is a good idea? My place is a mess at the moment and I’ll have to work most days and I don’t live anywhere _near_ to where you’re going to be filming. And I really would have liked to have more than _a week’s_ notice. What if I’d been going away? Or I already had people to stay? Besides, I feel like we’re either going to end up fucking or killing each other by the end of this trip and I don’t think either were really what you had in mind when you suggested we get to know each other again.”

“I just…” Keith stands up, the camera shaking as he does, the LA skyline visible through his window smears in the background. It’s still dark, the city’s lights like stars haloing Keith’s mad bed-head, and the shadows under his eyes are even darker than usual. And Lance feels his heart clench at the sight.

“I saw New York on the tour schedule and I thought, ‘I’ll get to see Lance,’ and then this whole Acxa thing happened and I could only think that it would be more time… with you. You know?” Keith is saying.

“Stop that.” Lance takes his exit. “You’re not allowed to be that adorable when I’m trying to be mad at you. It’s unfair.”

Keith just smiles.

“You’re making it worse!” Lance says but he’s laughing now.

“You don’t want to see me?” Keith whines but the way the corner of his lip twitches in its pout gives him away long before he cracks into laughter.

Lance finally pulls into the staff parking lot, mostly empty with so much time still before the bell. He gives Keith a shot of his sharp hip bones through the fabric of his shirt as he digs his jacket and bag out of the passenger footwell. “You’re a cruel one, babe,” he says and starts to climb out. “Alright, you can stay. But be warned: I have a studio, there’s only one bed.”

“I don’t mind sleeping with you.”

Lance hits his head on the door frame. Keith’s hand shoots out like he can reach all the way across the country to catch him before he falls. Some kid on the playing field laughs. There’s a track team training session going on.

“So cruel,” says Lance from the ground, phone splayed out beside him showing nothing but sky. “Just whipping out a line like that.” Keith’s laugh echoes out the speakers. “And you still say we’re not dating.”

Keith’s smile falters. “Lance…” he starts.

“No. You’re right. I’m being unfair.” He locks his car, sweeps up his phone, and starts heading inside. “Text me your flight details and we’ll talk more this evening.”

And if Keith’s eyes are a little dim as he replies, “Alright,” well, Lance has already ended the call. He doesn’t need to know.

 

***

 

Keith hates airports. He always has. They’re some sort of in-between place where time doesn’t exist. Is it 2am? Is it midday? Is it 4:32 in the afternoon? Nobody knows because nothing ever changes in here. With the perfectly controlled lighting and temperature and fucking _humidity._ There’s nothing organic here. They’re too quiet but not in the way that a library is quiet. More in that everybody is too busy being more important than everyone else to properly talk. So maybe quiet isn’t the word. _Impersonal_. That fits much better because, at the same time, they’re much too loud -- high heels and boots and business shoes on polished tiles and children crying and that one college kid snoring on a mountain of her and her friends’ luggage. Ten thousand conversations of quiet chatter echoing in the open space; the high pitched whir of machines; the sound of the luggage carousel trundling around; the whistle of a coffee maker somewhere. Tiny, minuscule sounds that, alone, would be more than tolerable but, together, in such a cathedral of a space, form a cacophony of white noise in a place outside of the flow of time. They’re other worldly. They’re dirty. They’re crowded.

He just doesn’t like them.

But Lance is late. So he burrows a little deeper into the furry hood of his jacket, pulls his cap a little lower over his eyes, and turns up the music blaring through his headphones. Maybe if he closes his eyes, he can pretend to be somewhere else. But he’s got three guitars with him. Three expensive and sentimentally valuable guitars. He’s not about to take his eyes off them.

He’s pushing the luggage trolley away with his feet and then hooking his ankles around the axle to pull it back again -- it’s surprisingly hard work, laden with instruments and an amp in a heavy case as it is -- when Lance finally tumbles in through the doors. No one even looks up from their phones. A sweaty man with wild eyes bursting through a set of glass doors is a common occurrence in an airport.

Lance is already reaching for his phone and Keith lets him, feels his own phone vibrating in his pocket, not even reaching for it. Lance’s eyes scan the arrivals lounge, phone to his ear, breath coming short. Give him a second… _There_.

“Keith!”

People do look at up at that. At the man with the sweaty bangs plastered to his forehead sprinting across the polished floors. And, dammit, if that isn’t Lance. No one else would be able to bring life into a place like this -- to bring normality and spontaneity into a fucking airport.

Keith’s tackled before he can even get to his feet and they go sliding across the floor. Lance is laughing. Keith is groaning. People are watching. And, for once, Keith couldn’t give less of a shit. He just cradles Lance’s face in his hands and cranes his head back against the tiles to look at him the best he can. This boy with the crooked grin and the bright eyes, who makes bad decisions without an ounce of regret. God, he’s missed him. He can feel his warmth seeping into his body through the four layers he’d worn in anticipation of a New York November. And it feels like something else is flowing into him too, filling in the gaps between his ribs, relaxing all the muscles that had tensed into knots without him even noticing. And then there’s Lance’s own peculiar, unique magic: Keith’s brain falls silent. No doubts. No questions. Lance is here; everything’s going to be alright.

And maybe that isn’t a healthy attitude to take. He probably shouldn’t base his entire mental stability on one person. Especially a person he no longer truly knows. This really isn’t what Keith told himself to do. This isn’t relearning Lance. This is projecting the old Lance onto a stranger and hoping the skin fits. But he doesn’t worry about any of that right now. He pushes it into a dusty corner of his mind and just enjoys the fact that he has his boy back in his arms for the first time in weeks.

A thought floats into his head: _maybe I should kiss him_.

He could. It would be so easy. And it’s more than a small part of him that wants to. Lance is so close. He can see his eyes flick down to Keith’s own lips for half a second so he knows he’s not the only one thinking it. But he can’t. Not yet. Not until they know what this thing is.

“Hey,” says Lance softly.

“Ow,” Keith groans and Lance only laughs more. “Let me up.”

“Aw, not even ‘Hey, good to see you’?” says Lance as he hauls Keith to his feet.

Keith just raises an eyebrow and pushes his headphones off his ears to dangle around his neck.

“Ke- _ith!_ ”

He’s rewarded by Keith reaching up to ruffle his hair, wiping his now-wet hand immediately on his jeans, and giving him an endearing, cheeky smile. “I have missed you, I guess,” he admits, reluctantly. It wouldn’t be a good idea to let Lance know just how much power he holds over him. At least, not just yet.

“Thanks, babe,” Lance replies and it’s probably not quite as sarcastic as he’d meant it to be. Then he turns to the luggage trolley and sighs. “Really Keith? Two guitars? You really needed two?”

“It’s actually three,” says Keith, patting one of the cases. “This one has two basses in it.”

“Meanwhile, you only have one backpack of non-music-related stuff. Classic Keith, I guess.”

“Most of my stuff is coming on the tour bus next week.”

Lance looks at him for a long moment before he says, “So… why didn’t you take the clothes on the plane with you and send the instruments in the bus? Pretty sure that’d be a better plan all ‘round. You get clothes to wear. Your stuff doesn’t get thrown around by airport staff. You don’t have to pay huge fees for extra luggage. Everybody wins.”

Keith scoffs. “But what if I needed one and I’d left it on the bus? You ever think of that, Lance?”

He’s being entirely serious but Lance just laughs and starts pushing the trolley away from the carousel. There’s something about Keith’s serious, outraged face that is inexplicably entertaining. Maybe it’s the surity of it, the confidence of it, as if there’s not even a possibility that he could be wrong — despite the fact he is saying something objectively silly.

“I actually had trouble narrowing it down,” Keith goes on, falling into step beside him, lifting his backpack off the trolley and onto one shoulder. “I couldn’t decide whether I should bring my five-string or my acoustic bass. Like, what if I’m writing and I get stuck because I don’t have a five-string with me? But then what if I’m stuck somewhere and I can’t plug in an amp?”

He’s still talking, throwing out the benefits of one instrument over another, tossing around terminology that goes straight over Lance’s head. But Lance is still riding high on the feeling of Keith actually being here with him in a cold New York parking lot on a grey afternoon. On seeing his earnest expression up close and without lag for the first time in over a month. Watching the way Keith’s frown creeps onto his face between words, just a little pinch between his brows, or the way he’ll lick his lips at the end of a sentence, the tiny bird-like flutter of his hand as he gestures and the expression of pure, concentrated passion in his eyes as he talks about mid-range tones. He’s suddenly struck with the urge to hold his hand. Just to make sure he’s not about to disappear again any time soon. And it’s probably only the fact that the trolley is so heavy and so unwieldy in his grip that stops him. Because Keith’s _here_ , just as much a music nerd as ever. More willing to spend his time and money on instruments than taking care of himself.

“By the way,” says Keith, “why exactly are you so sweaty? Did you run here all the way from your apartment?”

Lance snorts. “No, I couldn’t find a damn park so… we’re in for a bit of a walk. Sorry.”

Keith laughs and Lance finds himself looking over without even meaning to, just to see him when he smiles. “Aw, Lance. You ran from the car to see me? That desperate, were you?”

And Lance risks taking one hand off the trolley to shove him but he’s smiling too. “Thought you’d get lonely without me. I could just see you sitting on the floor, crying fat ghibli tears. ‘ _Where’s my Lancey-Lance? Why’s he gone and left me all alone?_ ’ Figured I’d swoop in and save the day.”

And the look Keith gives him then — part exasperated, part amused, part fond — is worth any amount of sweat down his back.

 

***

 

 _This is an odd sensation_ , Lance thinks, chewing the end of his pen and staring down at the stack of unmarked pop-quizzes before him without truly seeing a thing. Because he knows that, right in that second as his coffee cools in its mug beside three of its already icy siblings and a bit of plastic breaks off in his mouth and Tina, the social sciences teacher, shoots a ball of paper into the wastebasket unsuccessfully for the fourteenth time that day, Keith is sitting alone in Lance’s studio apartment. Talks with Acxa and her people don’t start up for another few days. And Lance still has work. So… what the hell is Keith doing all day?

It’s so weird to picture him there -- him in his grungy clothes that he manages to make look like designer brands and his shaggy hair and his thunderstorm eyes -- just sitting on the couch or something. Is he just sitting there? He could have gone out. But that doesn’t exactly sound like Keith. And with the way his face had pinched up the whole drive home from the airport, looking out the window at the streets crowded with strangers with their heads bowed and their collars up and the bright lights, the LCDs on buildings, and the billboards shouting advertisements, the grey sky threatening snow -- Lance is pretty damn sure Keith hasn’t gone out. Maybe he’s cooking. Maybe he’s burning down the whole building. Maybe he’s taking a nap. Maybe he’s writing music. Maybe he’s thinking about Lance?

He shakes the thought from his head.

No, this is stupid. Just because Keith is here in the flesh doesn’t mean that Lance can abandon every responsibility he has. He can’t just sit here all afternoon imagining Keith in _his_ space, getting comfortable, making it his own. He can’t think about how his linen will undoubtedly still smell like Keith when this month is over. Or the way Keith makes his tiny apartment feel warmer just by being there. Or the way he bit his smile back with his lip between his teeth when Lance asked what he wanted for dinner last night.

Fuck. He’s doing it again.

Thankfully, just then, Regris appears at his desk to talk about Jamal Pierce and whatever piece of school property he’s broken this week. And Lance can turn his mind away from the boy filling up his home.

 

***

 

Mrs Carmichael, Lance’s next-door neighbour, stops him as he’s walking down the hallway to his door. She’s a dichotomous thing. One part sweet old lady, one part venomous bitch.

“Oh!” she says as she sees him and puts a hand on his arm just as he reaches into his pea-coat pocket for his keys. Her other hand trails a bag of dirty laundry. “I’d be careful, dear. There was a lot of noise coming from your room all day.”

And, no doubt, she means it in some other way but Lance can’t help taking it as a threat. ‘ _I’d be careful_ ’? Or what? She’d come after him in the night?

Still, he smiles. “Sorry about that. I have a friend staying with me at the moment. He’s a musician.”

She just raises her eyebrows and says, “Is that what they’re calling it these days?” and trundles on down the hallway, leaving Lance wondering if he should warn Keith to keep it down a bit lest an old lady break in and shank them both in their sleep.

Shaking the thought from his head with a roll of his eyes, he sticks his keys in the lock and steps inside.

Keith’s phone is on the kitchen counter, bottom end stuck in an empty glass to act as an amp as it plays soft acoustic music throughout the apartment. A simple melody with a prominent beat that loops over and over like a metronome tick. And there’s Keith; standing in the kitchen, hips swaying idly to the music, hair up in a messy bun with odds and ends splayed in every direction, serene expression on his face as he hums along, and stirring a pot on the stove. It’s so fucking domestic. Like something out of 1950s housewife magazine. And it’s so damn tempting to sneak up behind him, wrap his arms around his waist, pull him flush against his chest, and stick his wind-bitten nose against that soft bit of neck revealed between messy bun and the collar of the loose sweater hanging off one shoulder. Just to revel in his warmth and feel him in his arms.

But they’re taking things slow. That would be overstepping more than a little.  

“Whoa,” says Lance instead, dumping his coat and messenger bag onto the couch and walking cautiously over to where Keith is, like he’s just spotted a doe in the woods. “Why does the apartment smell so delicious? Nothing is on fire. There’s no smoke. Who are you and what have you done with Keith Kogane?”

Keith casts one look over his shoulder at Lance’s voice before turning back to the stove with a scoff. “It’s just soup,” he says. “Soup is easy. You boil everything up together and then stick it in a blender until it’s soup-consistency. Besides,” he rests the spoon across the mouth of the pot and turns to face Lance properly, “Me and Shiro have been splitting the cooking for years now. And I’ve been on my own for the last few months. Pretty sure I’d have starved to death already if I didn’t know how to cook anything at all.”

And Lance doesn’t know what to say to that. He kind of just pulls up short on his journey to the kitchen. Because… Oh. Oh, fuck.

They’re taking things slow. And they’re taking things slow for exactly this reason. Because this is what Keith saw immediately, the second Lance’s lips left his on that stage all those weeks ago; the moment of euphoric passion had passed and Keith realised this very truth that is only just now dawning on Lance because of _soup_. Because, yes -- of course Keith’s been capable of learning new skills all this time; of course he’s been living his life, just as Lance has, these last six years; of course he wasn’t still holed up in that tiny, drafty apartment with Allura and Matt and Shiro without enough money for real vegetables. He’s been gathering experiences, heartbreaks and triumphs, little victories and defeats. All this time, he’s been changing in tiny incremental ways -- probably resulting in such slow changes that even he himself isn’t aware of them all. He didn’t just step out of some time bubble in Lance’s memories, 20 years old and unchanged.

It kind of hits him then. And it’s so stupid that it takes fucking _soup_ for Lance to realise what Keith’s been saying this whole time. They’re not the same people they were six years ago. They can never have what they had then again. They can’t ever go back.

He doesn’t know what to say. So he just nods his head, mutters, “Cool,” and heads off into the bathroom to wash off the smog of the city on autopilot.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first fic in the series where I actually have to do any real location research. So, if it's glaringly obvious that I have never set foot in the US in my life, my apologies.
> 
> Lyrics are, once again, from '[Rango](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7tsybcupk8&t=0s&list=PLdjcZbWbiPbKyER1kXEtGiu8zJTXFtCso&index=9)' by Catfish and the Bottlemen. <\-- that's the Swoons cover again. [HERE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNw8HQbhHhg)is the original album version.
> 
> [p.s be prepared for a long note at the end because I have Feelings about s8 and they need to be aired]

Lance, rather understandably, almost ejects entirely from his own body the next morning. The sun comes in between the blinds he intentionally left open last night to wake him up and he rises slowly through the many layers of unconsciousness to wakefulness with the kind of safe energy of a toddler decked out in floaties in a paddling pool. Only to discover Keith’s face. Keith’s pale face, all relaxed in sleep after his perpetual frown has melted away in the night, with his hair spreading out like octopus ink across his own pillow and onto Lance’s, lips barely parted, glistening and moist and the sound of his breathing gentle in the silent morning, his thick eyelashes fluttering and twitching against his cheeks, the rising sun coating him in liquid gold. He’s fucking angelic. And Lance -- poor, innocent Lance -- is not prepared.

Because he only came to understand just what it is between them eleven hours ago. And now here is Keith with his angelic face, oversized sweater scrunched up under his armpits in the night to reveal abs that prove he never stopped going to the gym even after he no longer worked there, in Lance’s bed. He’s in Lance’s bed. Sleeping so innocently and so trustingly within arms’ reach of a man who is, by Keith’s own definition, a stranger. 

He bites his tongue to keep himself from making any noise (lest he wake the beast and who knows what sort of dangers Keith will unleash once conscious again. He might give a tiny kitten yawn and Lance will spontaneously combust.) and rolls onto his back to think. 

Maybe he didn’t entirely understand just what he was agreeing to when he let Keith stay here. Maybe this was going to be harder than he expected.

Because he hadn’t understood just what it was Keith had meant, what it was Keith had long known, when Lance agreed to this month-long sleepover. He’d imagined things going a little differently. He’d just sort of figured he could play along with Keith’s little ‘we’re strangers’ game until it became obvious that it was bullshit and they could go back to what they once were. But they couldn’t. He understood that now. There couldn’t be as much casual cuddling as he’d been hoping for, as many kisses on the cheek and fingers carded through hair. 

No. Fuck this. They hadn’t even started this slow when they were actual,  _ real _ strangers. He’ll take a step back. From the physical side of things, at least. He’ll practice that much self restraint for Keith’s sake. But other than that? He’s going to do as he damn well pleases. 

But it’s not that simple, is it? Because it’s Keith. And Keith is so special, so worth every effort, but so easily spooked. And Lance isn’t entirely sure he could survive losing him again. 

He turns again to the sleeping angel beside him. He listens to Keith breathe in the silence of the morning and watches his eyelashes twitch in his dreams. Gently, with a single finger, he brushes Keith’s bangs back from his face.

His beautiful, bruised Keith. Like a watermelon, tough and sturdy on the outside but crack him open and there’s only sweetness within. 

The image makes Lance smile and he risks tracing his finger along Keith’s hairline again. “Watermelon-boy,” he whispers with a grin. 

He’ll have to be careful. Keith let him in once before and Lance had left him broken. He’ll have to walk a thin line between Keith’s comfort and where Lance wants to go. Maybe— not  _ push  _ the boundaries, per se — but  _ lean  _ on them, see if they’d be willing to shift. It’s a tight wire act. They’re not starting over from strangers, but Keith might be more willing to trust him if they were. And Lance has to prepare himself to do whatever it takes to regain that trust — if he ever wants to make something new. 

 

***

 

“Let me take you,” says Keith over breakfast. 

Lance chokes on his cereal. “What?”

“Let me give you a lift in today.”

“Oh,” he sighs and then, as the words sink in, he frowns. “How are you planning on doing that, you vacation bum? Gonna carry me on your back?”

Keith rolls his eyes and spoons more yoghurt into his bowl. “No,” he says. “I’ve got a bike. Went out yesterday to pick it up from the rental place. Your trains are disgusting, by the way.”

“I hope it’s a tandem bike,” says Lance with a crooked smirk. “Or things are going to get a bit squeezey.”

“It’s a motorbike, you idiot.”

Lance pauses, spoon halfway to his mouth, to meet Keith’s eyes across the table. And then he slowly raises one eyebrow. “A motorbike. How very ‘Keith’.”

Keith just goes back to his breakfast with a huff and a hint of a smile that won’t quite go away no matter how hard he pushes it down. 

“Okay,” says Lance after a minute. “But I’m supposed to be having lunch with my sister and my break’s only an hour so…”

Keith shrugs. “I can come back and take you to that, too.”

“Don’t be stupid, ba— Keith. That’s so much unnecessary driving. I’ll just text her and we can meet closer to the school.”

“Lance,” says Keith evenly, “what else am I going to do all day? You know I don’t sit still well. That hasn’t changed.”

Lance laughs. “You could sightsee? You ever been to New York before?”

Keith pushes his chair back with a huff, gathering their empty plates and heading into the kitchenette. “This is my second national tour, Lance. I’ve been to New York before.”

“Here’s how I’m guessing it went down last time:” Lance canters after him, a laugh pulling at his words, and, together, the two of them begin filling his miniscule dishwasher. It’s a tiny, clunky thing that attaches to the kitchen sink, not big enough for anything really larger than a dinner plate. Pots, pans, trays, chopping boards? Yeah, you’re all still getting washed by hand. It’s meant to sit on a countertop but Lance absolutely doesn’t have the bench space for that. It sits on the floor. 

“You flew in on a red-eye,” he says. “Caught an uber into Manhattan, then holed up in your hotel room and didn’t come out except to play gigs.”

Keith opens his mouth to object but Lance holds up a finger to cut him off. 

“Oh,” he adds, “And that one time the others dragged you out to a bar for a drink.”

Judging by the straight line of Keith’s mouth, Lance has probably hit the nail on the head. What he wouldn’t give to kiss that piqued pout off his lips, to smooth that frown between his eyes with his fingertips, and baby this boy until all his indignant huffiness fades away. He bops Keith on the nose with a slotted spoon instead, and then drops it into the dishwasher.

“See, babe? I do still know you,” he says.

Soup can go fuck itself.

 

***

 

Lance isn’t entirely sure what he expected from a motorbike ride. Probably a high-speed race across a picturesque countryside -- probably with a sheer cliff-face to one side and an angry, turquoise sea in the background -- clinging tight to Keith’s waist with the bike rumbling powerfully between his knees and the wind in his face. He’d have a scarf tied over his hair and a cigarette would be dangling out the corner of Keith’s mouth, for whatever reason, as he drove, the end glowing brilliant orange in the wind. It turns out, that’s not quite the reality. Oh, they speed along, alright, for a while down the motorway, but then they hit the city and the trip turns into a series of fifty metre crawls between traffic lights. And Lance does hold tightly onto Keith’s waist as he weaves between cars with barely a finger-breadth of room for error, provoking irate honks and burly men leaning out their windows to swear at him. It’s far less romantic than he thought it would be. Fear of death will do that, he guesses. 

And it’s cold. It’s so fucking cold. He’s starting to wish he’d worn his raincoat like Keith suggested, hideous neon green and purple thing that it is, just to cut through some of that November windchill. Keith seems totally unaffected in his leather jacket. The bastard.

Finally the grey school building looms out of the mist and Lance can snap his icy fingers off Keith’s hip-bones. All of him feels frozen or sore, all his muscles locked up like he’s just run a marathon through the snow. The track team’s back on the playing field, running slow laps through the morning air. The football team shuffles along behind them, slower on the whole in their hoodies, arms crossed and shoulders hunched against the cold. No doubt, there’s a great deal of complaining going on over there but neither coach seems to have noticed. One’s on his phone. The other seems to have snuck off for a sneaky smoke break.

Keith takes off his helmet and shakes out his hair, laughing as Lance tries to walk away from the bike, legs boughed like a cowboy. Lance shoots him a glare but, dammit, he looks so cute with his wind-bitten, pink nose and that playful glint in his eyes, he can’t keep it up.

“Yeah, yeah,” he grumbles. “Laugh it up, bike-boy. I’ll have my revenge when you least expect it.”

That just makes Keith laugh harder. Lance can’t quite begrudge him for it. The sound is so bright.

The jogging teenagers pass by.

“G’morning, Mr McClain!” one shouts. Must be from the track team if he still has the breath to shout. 

“Good morning!” Lance shouts back, sunny as he can manage when he’s so uncomfortable. 

“Still hiding smoking from relatives?” The same kid smirks over his shoulder and Lance’s grin dissolves into spluttering. 

“Wh-bu-- You shouldn’t be listening to that song! It has bad words in it!” 

But the clump of teenagers are already gone. Keith is laughing so hard now he has to crouch down to keep himself from falling over.

“This is your fault,” says Lance, pointing an accusing finger at him. “I told you that story in confidence.”

Keith’s apologetic grin doesn’t look apologetic in the slightest and Lance goes to walk away. 

“Lance,” Keith gasps out and it’s enough to make him turn back around. “You sure you don’t want me to pick you up for lunch?”

And Lance looks at him then. At his mussed hair and his wind-bitten nose, the flush in his cheeks from the cold, at the laugh-tears in his eyes. He just looks so soft and warm, curled up in his leather jacket, hood of the sweater underneath bunched up against his neck, one hand in his pocket and gazing up at Lance innocently through his thick, dark lashes. 

Lance sighs. He’s been defeated. 

He walks back over and cups Keith’s chilly face with one gloved hand and, not giving himself time to think about it, quickly presses his lips to the other’s cheek. 

“Was that okay?” he whispers.

Keith just nods, eyes wide, and Lance can’t decide if he’s scared him or not, if that was really okay or not. 

“I’ll see you this afternoon,” he says with a grin. “At the  _ end  _ of the day.” He’s walking away now, stepping backwards, hands stuffed deep in his peacoat. “Go be a tourist for a day, babe. Put on a floral shirt and some khakis. See Time Square or something.” Keith rolls his eyes but he’s smiling. “I’ll be here when you get back.” Then, with one final wink, he turns and jogs inside to the warmth of central heating.

 

***

 

Keith does go to Time Square. After a warm second breakfast in a coffee shop, of course. 

It’s full of couples taking pictures. Really full. Packed to bursting point. All standing around, getting in the way of locals who just have places to be. Gathered around the christmas tree like ants in honey. The screens on the buildings are bright, even in the morning sun. There’s just so much high definition noise, neon, movement. The chain stores that line the square are visually loud, so are all the damn screens (seriously? Do there need to be so many screens?), the tourists are loud, the pissed-off locals are loud, the traffic is loud… everything is just so fucking loud. Keith finds himself hunching his shoulders, trying to hide in his jacket. All he needs now is for someone to recognise him. He forgot to bring his cap and he’d look shady as fuck walking around in his bike helmet. 

Oh. And it’s cold as balls. 

Keith curses Lance.

“I miss California,” he grumbles miserably, looking around at all the people experiencing ‘the most magical moment’ of their lives. 

“Bitch, me too,” says a voice next to him.

Keith whirls around to see a teenage girl, a girl who should definitely be in school right now, leaning on the post next to him. Instead, she’s standing in Time Square offering sympathetic curses to strangers. 

She’s wearing a back-to-front baseball cap, the edges of the plaid shirt she’s tied around her waist sticking out from beneath her windbreaker. She looks as surprised to have spoken as he feels to have heard her. Like she just quantum leapt into her own body, or fell from the sky to land beneath a statue of George M Cohan (1878-1942),  _ ‘Give my regards to Broadway _ ’. 

“Um,” he says.

“Sorry about that,” she starts in reply. “That was probably a bit ru-- Hey, you’re that guy.”

Keith winces before he can help it. Guess he can’t play it off now with a simple, ‘nah, but I get that all the time’. 

“Yes?” he says eventually.

“Where do I know you from, again?” she asks. “You look really familiar but I just can’t place it…”

“Uh, I’m in a band.”

“Oh!” she shouts so loud that, even in the chaos of Times Square before Christmas, half a dozen people turn to see what’s going on. The girl’s reached out and grabbed Keith by both biceps by this point. “Oh!  _ Castle of Lions!  _ Holy fucking shit. Sorry. Language. Again.” She drops his arms like he’s burnt her. “But you’re Keith! My girlfriend loves your band so hecking much. All her playlists are, like, 90% you guys. She’s gonna be so jealous that I saw you in the flesh. What are you doing in New York, though? Oh, the tour, of course. Silly me. Do you mind-- I’m sure you get this all the time but would you mind if I got a photo with you? You know, as proof? ‘Cause there’s no fucking way she’s gonna believe me otherwise.”

And Keith’s heart is such a strange mix of emotions he doesn’t know what expression he’s making let alone what he should say. Because there’s a reasonably large percentage of his brain that’s just saying, ‘Ew. Photos. Small talk with strangers,’ and complaining at the way she shot words out at him like a gatling gun. But, at the same time, he always has that soft spot for people who like his music. And then, there’s the intense jealousy. Maybe it’s only because he’s pretty damn openly gay that she’s admitting it so easily but, shit, he wishes he’d had the bravery at sixteen or seventeen or however old this girl is, to freely admit to a total stranger that he was dating someone of the same gender. As it was, he’d spent his high school years being terrified and covering it up with aggression. You know, as you do. So, he just kind of stands there with his hands still stuffed deep in his pockets, the zippers icy cold against his wrists, and his mouth hanging open. No doubt his face is a mess of emotions. And she’s still looking at him, phone in hand, her eyes shining bright with hope.

“Uh…” he says intelligibly. “Sure?” 

She grins and slings an arm around his shoulder. 

_ Okay _ , thinks Keith generously as the shutter clicks.  _ Pros of New York: Lance and this girl.  _

It’s almost enough for him to not wish himself on the other side of the country.

 

***

 

The ground is still too warm for the snow to properly stick but, apparently, they’d had their first proper snowfall a few days before Keith arrived. So Central Park is awash with autumn foliage and cold sludge, half-melted snow filled with mud and sticks and bits of grass that pedestrians have ground into it. A picturesque scene. 

Keith tucks his jeans into his boots to keep them out of the wet.

He’d been planning on laying on the grass somewhere. Find a nice bit of sun. Do some cloud gazing. All that good stuff. But one look at the wet ground and that plan goes out the window. 

Instead, he clears a little patch of mush off a bridge railing and gets comfortable. A quick pat down reveals his spare pair of gloves in the left pocket of his innermost jacket. He slips them on over the fingerless pair he always wears while riding and pulls his hood up over his head, pulling the drawstrings to bring it tight around his face. That in addition to muffler pulled up over his face to keep his nose warm renders him not only unrecognisable but also almost comfortable. 

A woman walks passed him in short sleeves. Keith just sniffs. Crazy New Yorkers. 

He tips his head back to catch some sun on his eyelids. And, like this, bundled up against the cold, eyes closed against the grey skyline, watery sun on his face, New York isn’t so bad. He can actually imagine living here. Amongst the grey and the people and the cold. If only to be close to Lance.

He scoffs and opens his eyes. 

He’s got to stop doing that. He’s told himself a thousand times already that things have changed, he needs to start again. But there’s still that part of him that says, ‘Fuck it. I’m keeping him anyway.’ Besides, he’s leaving in a few weeks. And he knows, when the time comes, he’ll be glad to get out of here. Such thoughts are irrelevant.

He catches himself smiling down at his reflection, frozen in the stream below him. And a bassline as heavy as the buildings looming overhead comes into his mind -- a changeable melody that fluctuates from bulky to airy like the city itself. 

> _ And though this town does flaunt _
> 
> _ All the stuff you need to feel at home, _
> 
> _ I plan on taking from it nothing. _

And then he’s biting his tongue to keep his smile down as he stuffs his hands back in his pockets and turns to walk on through the park. Somehow it feels really good to shit talk something that can’t fight back, even in the safety of his own mind. Reminds him of high school and imagining the sound Lucas Cross’ nose might make as it broke — that is, if Shiro ever let him retaliate for all the stupid shit that fucker said. But Lance’s face pops into his head. Lance at nineteen when all his edges were still soft and his eyes were still bright and naive. Lance at twenty-five with his sarcastic smirk, a twitch of a genuine smile pulling at his lips. And Keith has to amend his new lyrics.

> _ But then again, there’s you _ .

He adds them grudgingly because, dammit, even as they are at the moment, he’s still going to regret leaving Lance here in this place when he goes back to LA.

His feet hurry through the rest of the park. He needs to get to somewhere with a guitar as soon as possible. 

 

***

 

Being back in a high school makes Keith uncomfortable. Sure, it’s not  _ his  _ high school in a tiny Midwestern town filled with racists and homophobes and children with too much responsibility and not enough understanding. But all high schools look pretty much the same. Even the fancy rich ones. Kind of like a cross between a prison and a hospital. He keeps expecting Mr Kipling, his eighth grade history teacher, to appear in the corridor and shout at him for not finishing his essay. 

The whole place just sets his teeth on edge. 

It’s made worse, of course, by having no fucking clue where he’s going. 

There’s still a spattering of kids around. Hanging around lockers and the library, spilled out over the playing fields. And, no doubt, most of the teachers are still here. The bell rang barely an hour ago. 

He probably looks really suspicious. A grown man dressed almost entirely in black, hiding his face with sunglasses and a hood, carrying a motorbike helmet? Yeah, that’s a guy that does not belong in a high school. He’ll be lucky if he doesn’t get himself shot.

Still, he made a promise and he has a Lance to find. 

He stops a kid in the hallway. The kid gives him a hesitant once over, clutching a textbook to his chest, and then looks at him fearfully. Keith sighs.

“Uh,” he says. “I’m looking for Lance? I mean, Mr McClain?”

The kid just looks at him blankly.

“He teaches physics?”

No reaction.

“Is there, like, a staff room or something?”

The kid wordlessly raises an arm and points down the corridor.

“Thanks,” says Keith and the kid scurries away like a beetle.

Keith sighs again and heads down the pointed direction.

 

Which is exactly how he comes upon Lance in the science faculty staff room. He’s bedraggled. Keith can see the fingerprint smears on his glasses even from where he stands at the door, they reflect the fluorescent tube lights overhead. Lance has them pushed up on his head, almost hidden amongst his tousled hair. His shirt is crumpled and unbuttoned definitely more than is socially acceptable. He has two ballpoints tucked behind one ear -- one red, one blue -- and another between his teeth as he spins a half-empty coffee mug idly between his fingers and stares at the stack of paperwork before him, haggard face looking pallid in the turquoise-white light of his open laptop.

In all honesty, he looks a little like he vacated his body a good twenty minutes ago.

Keith can’t help the fond smile on his face.

He doesn’t say anything, just leans against the doorframe and watches the other man.

 

Lance isn’t entirely all there. Most of him is back in a tiny coffee shop with his sister and the exasperated look on her face as he buried his head in his hands and unloaded the entire contents of his brain on her. 

“This is the same boy from years ago that you wouldn’t let me tell Mamá about, isn’t it?” she’d said and rolled her eyes. “And now he’s living with you and you seriously thought this wasn’t going to be a problem?”

Lance just groaned.

“You’re an idiot,” his sister said, sipping her skinny hazelnut macchiato. 

“So what am I supposed to do, V? I can’t just tell him to get out because he’s too pretty and I have no self control. And I already asked Hunk. He was no help. He just said to hurry up and jump him and get it over with. Pidge just laughed,  _ the gremlin…  _ You’re my last hope.”

Veronica couldn’t help a snort at the look on her baby brother’s face -- half wild, half exhausted, hair mussed from running his own hands through it too many times. 

She kicked him in the knee under the table and rolled her eyes. 

“You’re being an idiot,” she said again.

“Don’t you think I know that?”

“You know something, Lance?” She took another sip of her drink just for dramatic effect. “Sometimes I really don’t get you. Your problem is that you have a boy in your bed who you like and who likes you. And here you are, freaking out about it? You’re a strange one.”

Lance sniffed and finally reached for his own coffee. “I don’t want to scare him… He wants to take things slow,” he grumbled into the lid of his drink.

Veronica rolled her eyes again. “Did you scare him the first time?”

“No?”

“Well there you go. He’s a big kid. He’ll tell you to back off if he’s uncomfortable.”

“But will he?” Lance leaned on the table between them. “ _ Will he _ , V? And do I really like him or do I just like the  _ old  _ him?”

She stood up with a sigh. “I’m leaving. You’re hopeless.”

 

There’s a noise in the staff room and Lance blinks back into his own body. Tina’s clearing her throat and scuffing her shoes. No doubt there’s a mild inconvenience in her way and she’s too awkward to say anything about it again. Lance looks up to see if she needs a hand and comes face to face with Keith’s killer expression. All soft eyes and relaxed features and gentle smile. 

Lance feels his face jump ten degrees. And Keith just quirks an eyebrow. Lance gives a little wave and Keith steps inside the room. Tina can finally shuffle out the door around him.

“You ready to go?” asks Keith, settling his motorbike helmet on the floor beside Lance, pulling up a chair and crossing his arms over the corner of his desk. 

Lance has to swallow three times before he feels ready to speak. And in that time he has a realisation -- just what it was Veronica was trying to tell him with all those rolled eyes and kicks to the knee. 

Okay, so even if Keith is different now, Lance still knows more about him now than when they first met in that shitty bar all those years ago. So what if he can cook now? So what if his hair is longer or he wouldn’t have to stand on his toes to kiss Lance anymore? Who gives a shit about any of that? Lance sure as hell didn’t care six years ago. He’d seen a pretty boy in a bar and been lucky enough to go home with him. They’d been strangers. They knew nothing about each other then. And they’d still been good enough for each other. 

But it’s even simpler than that, isn’t it? He’d said it himself, hadn’t he? 

‘ _ What do you want? _ ’ 

Does he want Keith? When he looks at him does he still feel that warmth creep up his spine and his stomach flutter and his eyes begin to smile without him even meaning to? Do his legs still turn to jello when he smiles? Would he still give anything in the world just to come home and listen to Keith fuck around on a bass for two hours?

The thought of ‘Soup can go fuck itself’ floats through his head again and he smiles. Keith tips his head questioningly and Lance is gone. His mind clears. He’s just been thinking too hard. That’s it. He’ll stop thinking. 

He cups one of his hands on Keith’s cheek, still warm from his coffee mug, and presses a kiss to the other man’s forehead. And, sure, his brain starts racing for a moment -- wondering if he’s overstepped again, scared he’s just fucked up -- but then Keith just quirks an eyebrow with a smile and all those thoughts fall to the wayside. 

Starting again, taking it slow, however else Keith wants to phrase it -- that doesn’t mean Lance has to walk on eggshells around him all the time. He’s still allowed to love Keith Kogane. 

“Hang on a bit,” he says. “I’ve still got lessons to plan.”

And Keith just nods, settling in for a long wait with his head on Lance’s desk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you even walk into a high school like this in america? I know there are security guards and shit (which is totally wild to me because... what?) but there's technically nothing stopping me from wandering onto my own high school campus except for the fact that I might see Mrs. Tuhan and she'll want to know how her expectations of me worked out (they didn't).
> 
> Spoilers for S8 below: (sorry for the rant)  
> okay. so.... this season happened. And a part of me is just sad because the great coming together of the fandom that happens immediately before the release of a new season is over. Other parts of me are just kind of hurt and disappointed with the ending. Look, I'm not going to say that DW doesn't have the right to kill off their own characters but it just felt like they wrote themselves into a corner and didn't leave enough time to write themselves out of it again. What the shit were the last four or five episodes? What even was that?   
> I'm not upset about Klance not being canon. I already made my peace with that about three seasons ago. And I'm not going to say anything against Allurance. I may be a klance shipper/writer/artist but I actually think they have the potential to be a really good couple. Just... the only way it was going to work out well, and I've been saying this for like two seasons, is with some really delicate, intricate writing and a shit ton of time. And VLD is never delicate with their writing. They're the definition of heavy handed. So I could see this awkward, clunky, forced-feeling thing coming a mile away. ALSO you can't tell me Allura felt as strongly for Lance as he did for her. Did you hear her voice when she thought Lotor was back? That is not the way you sound when you're over someone. I'm not saying she still likes him or anything but she was definitely not ready for a new relationship. It was security and a place to belong, somewhere to escape her own fears and loneliness that she wanted and Lance offered himself up on a silver platter like the self-sacrificing idiot he is. Whether she was aware of it or not, she was using him.   
> ALSO ALSO there was just... like... no acknowledgement at any point that they just straight up murdered Lotor without hearing his explanation. Again, I'm not saying his explanation would have made things alright but you can't just kill someone without hearing them out. (Speaking of, what the fuck was going on with the altean colonies? I feel like there's still a fair amount unexplained there...)  
> I think, most of all, it's disappointment I feel. Because, if they hadn't killed Lotor off for real, if he'd come back for a redemption arc (or even.... i don't even know an explanation arc? for fucking anything that gave him some of the depth he deserved?) and they had another... four episodes or so to give them the time to fix that shit-show at the end, to develop any sort of relationship between Shiro and random-side-character-whose-name-we-never-even-learn, for Lance to realise what his relationship with Allura really is -- to reassure her that even if she doesn't do this, he's still going to be her family -- just four more episodes of time to write themselves out of the hole they'd dug themselves into and I think this season could have been something great.   
> But they didn't. And it wasn't. And now I'm going to just sit here and wait for the fix-it fics to roll in. 
> 
> Hope that wasn't too long and that it made sense. No offence taken if you just skipped it entirely. Let me know what you thought of the chapter and I'll see you all in two days. I'm still gonna be hanging around this fandom for a while yet.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm a day late with this. Almost two days late with this. My middle sister arrived for Christmas and things have been kind of chaos since. I've spent most of the day dragged from one shopping centre to another trying to find a present for our fussy brother (whose only request was 'something good. not something bad' because he's a little shit) and the remainder of the day making ribbon flowers because my eldest sister and I have a kind of unofficial wrapping competition every year and, goddammit, if she's breaking out the watercolours then I'm sure as hell breaking out the needlepoint.
> 
> Also, if you've left a comment on this fic so far, I need you to know that I've read them all, I've even started drafting replies to some in my head, they're fucking fantastic and I've loved every one. But I'm trying to stay more in the writing-zone than the... uh... post-publication zone at the moment. I will start my replies once I get the fifth chapter done!  
> Anyway! This was too long for beginning notes. On with the chapter!
> 
> Lyrics:  
> [Be Your Shadow](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AsvZge3IiQ&list=PLdjcZbWbiPbKyER1kXEtGiu8zJTXFtCso&index=23) \-- The Wombats (either verse would have actually been more appropriate but I like this chorus the best so this is what we're going with)  
> [Homesick](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqipjR6z0qg&list=PLdjcZbWbiPbKyER1kXEtGiu8zJTXFtCso&index=3&t=0s) \-- Catfish and the Bottlemen (I feel like I should apologise to Van McCann for constantly and intentionally reinterpreting his lyrics...)

Acxa, if anything, has even more presence in the flesh than she does in her pictures. It’s those eyes. That hyper-focused gaze that just stares you down from behind the lens and says, ‘Buy it. I dare you’. The gaze she’s built a career upon. Only, without the camera there to act as a filter and paired with her ramrod posture and polite speech, it’s too sharp, bordering on uncomfortable. Like she’s taking up all the air in the room. 

Her agent, in comparison, is invisible. She just sits behind her laptop, eyes unfocused on the desk and one earbud dangling out from under her plain black hijab. She has a screen reading program running, hence the earphones, and that takes Keith a little by surprise. She’s blind. Or, at least, vision impaired. And suddenly he has so much more respect for the silent, invisible agent. Shit, the amount of blood she’s probably cried as she fights her way through the entertainment industry and its stupid ideals… And here she is. Representing Acxa. He’s oddly proud of her -- this stranger he’s just met. 

They certainly make quite a contrast in the utilitarian meeting room, at any rate, and Keith has to make a conscious effort not to stare. 

He feels something brush against his leg and looks down to find a small black cat -- or, well, a cat’s tail. It’s already passed him. He watches it as it takes a lap around the room before finally leaping into the agent’s lap and curling into a ball. 

“Shall we begin?” says Blaytz and Keith’s attention returns to him. His eyes are red and his navy three piece suit is crumpled. He’s come straight from the airport. Still, he reaches into his briefcase to take out a contract and place it on the table.

“Sure,” says Shiro. 

Acxa folds her hands on the table and leans forward. “I’ve already read through the draft contract you sent to Narti. Have there been any major changes made since then?”

And that’s about where Keith zones out. He’s only really here to show his face, anyway. The whole business side of music is kind of lost on him. He’ll just write his songs, let the real adults deal with the money and the legal details. So he starts thinking about lunch and the smell from that one sandwich shop he’d passed on his way to Acxa’s agency. Then he’s thinking about pickles and whether Lance still hates them. 

He shakes his head. He’s supposed to be working. He can’t go daydreaming about Lance now. 

The others are talking about the possible impacts the video may have on Acxa’s personal brand. About the ramifications of appearing makeup-less, even if it’s only for a few seconds. 

The video-clip’s a simple one. It follows the morning routine of one woman, who just happens to be a drop-dead gorgeous international model. She wakes up, eats and takes a handful of meds and vitamins, showers and then spends an impractical amount of time on her appearance. It shows her struggling with what to wear and her figure, applying her makeup with a well-practiced hand and intense focus, straightening her hair but only enough for it to still look natural. Then she goes out, buys her groceries, and returns to the house to don some sweats and clean her face. All that effort for half an hour in the public eye. 

Allura’s idea, her song, is about the ridiculousness of modern life. About how much easier life would be and how much energy we’d save if we all wake up tomorrow and decide we’re fine the way we are. If we were all imperfect together. If we all removed our filters and scraped off our concealer.

Because we all lie. And we all know we lie. So it should all be meaningless. But, for some reason, we just won’t let the facade of perfection that we fight to maintain drop. For some reason we keep forgetting that we’re not the only one whose life isn’t insta-perfect. 

That’s why Acxa is so crucial, or so Allura argued. Where else would they find a model famed world wide for her beauty and ambition who has also openly admitted to struggling with anxiety? 

‘Even the best of us are wearing this mask’, is the message of the video as it starts to show others -- the members of the band, actors hired for the part, a selection of  _ Castle of Lions  _ fans who won a raffle -- all performing that morning routine, all hiding their flaws and pretending it’s easy, pretending it’s natural. 

Keith had actually asked Lance if he wanted to be in it a few days ago, to be part of Keith’s morning routine. But Lance, thinking of Plax’s warning to keep things on the down-low, had turned him down. Much to his own annoyance. He would have loved to be in a video-clip. He would have been great. Could have thrown in this whole teaching thing and become a movie-star. But fate, it seems, has conspired against him.

Still, Keith had then pestered Allura and the producers to find a replacement. Another cinnamon skinned, brown haired, broad shouldered man to play Keith’s significant other. And Allura, the godsend she is, despite how many times Keith’s insisted they’re not dating, didn’t give more than a knowing look at this very specific set of characteristics. 

But now Acxa and her people are talking about legal details and Keith is bored out of his skull. He zones back out. And lets himself daydream. Just a little bit… 

  
  


***

 

Keith and Lance are, by most definitions, pretty decent roommates. They mesh well. And, sure, Lance somehow manages to get water  _ everywhere _ when he showers and Keith leaves bits of beard in the sink, Lance’s early starts are slowly killing them both and Keith tends to scatter instruments all over the lounge -- but, overall, they’re easy to live with. Complementary. If Lance makes breakfast, Keith will make dinner. Lance takes morning showers, Keith takes his in the evening. They just fit together like pieces of a puzzle. It’s easy. And there’s something about that that grates at Lance.

It’s so easy to forget when they’re performing a perfectly rehearsed dance around the apartment during the morning rush that this isn’t forever. This isn’t the new normal. He plants a toothpaste kiss on Keith’s forehead most mornings these days and has to immediately remind himself of reality.

Keith is going home in three weeks. To the home where Lance is not. For the first time, he thinks he understands the way Keith felt being left behind in LA all those years ago. Knowing the inevitability of it doesn’t make it any better.

But he can hear Keith humming in the bathroom as Lance stacks plates in the dishwasher after breakfast and, for the moment, he lets reality melt away. For the moment, he lets himself believe they really live together in this tiny studio apartment inconveniently far from the city. That tomorrow and the day after and all the days after that, Keith will still be in Lance’s bed when he wakes up, his hair spread over the pillows like watercolour paint and the blankets clenched in his fist.

He walks to the bathroom and leans against the frame. Keith is still humming as he ties his hair back, singing every third word, his voice echoing against the tiles.

The humming evolves into a mumbled song as he lathers his face with shaving cream, contorting his chin to get it all. It’s so stupidly endearing that Lance is pretty sure his heart is three times the medically advised size. 

> _ Kiss me with your fist, it’s alright. _
> 
> _ Wrap your hands around my neck, I won’t mind. _
> 
> _ I’m permanent, now I won’t go. _
> 
> _ I just wanna be your shadow. _

His voice squishes with his mouth into a ridiculous duck-face pout to reveal the patch of skin shadowed by his lower lip. He runs the razor under the tap. 

> _ Have a bus, drive it over my rib cage. _
> 
> _ Snap my bank cards and throw ‘em at my face. _
> 
> _ I’m permanent, now I won’t go. _
> 
> _ I just wanna be your shadow. _

“Got a bit of a kink, there?” Lance can’t hide the teasing glint in his voice.

Keith, razorblade millimetres from his skin, jumps and whirls around so fast he sprays the mirror with shaving cream.

“I don’t remember that from before,” says Lance.

Keith’s grumbled reply is inaudible and he turns back to the mirror, though his blush is still reflected clearly for Lance to see.

Lance feels his smirk soften. “Working on a new song?”

“‘S the _ Wombats _ …” Keith mumbles, finally putting blade to skin. “Allura got me into them.”

“Ah, that would explain it, then.”

“Hmm?”

“Just seemed a bit too…  _ unconditional _ for one of yours.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Keith’s glare meets Lance’s eyes in the mirror as he taps bits of stubble-filled cream from his razor with far more force than necessary on the edge of the sink. He’s going to forget to wash it away again when he’s done, Lance just knows it.

He raises his hands placatingly. “Babe, even you have to admit that every, like, second  _ Castle _ song is about sex.”

“Sex is important to me,” says Keith.

Lance laughs and Keith only manages ten seconds before he cracks and his own smile slips through. 

“I’m not saying that’s a bad thing.” Lance is still smiling as he wraps around Keith from behind and balances his chin on his shoulder. Their monstrous, two-headed, Santa-bearded reflection blinks back at them.

“Careful,” says Keith, leaning his face away from Lance’s hair.

Lance pays him no mind.

“In fact,  __ I really like that one  _ Castle  _ song that’s blatantly sex-focused,” he says.

“Oh yeah?” Keith tries to go back to shaving in this new, constricting position. They both know he could just tell Lance to let go. Neither points it out when he doesn’t.

“You know the one that… It’s from the EP. It kind of sounds like steps at the beginning.” He hums a few notes, fingers bouncing down a set of invisible steps in the air, and Keith grimaces.

He reaches for a wet washcloth and whips his face clean before he replies. “Oh,” he says. “ _ That _ one.”

Lance takes a peek at Keith’s blank expression out of the corner of his eye. “Why did you say that as if this song once shoved dog shit through your grandma’s letterbox?”

“It’s just,” says Keith meeting Lance’s eyes in the mirror with a complicated expression, “me and that song don’t exactly have a happy relationship.”

Lance raises an eyebrow.

“It’s an old one. Like, a really old one,” says Keith.

“I know that. I remember you playing it. You know…  _ before _ .”

Keith shakes his head. “No, even older than that. I wrote it back when I was still in college. It’s about a friend. Uh… it’s about my… um… girlfriend at the time.”

Lance’s arms fall away and he looks at Keith incredulously. “ _ Girl _ friend?”

“The only girlfriend of my life,” Keith replies with a little nervous chuckle, his gaze turning up to the ceiling as if asking for strength. Or maybe just asking to be struck down on the spot. Either works. 

Lance looks like he’s enjoying this a little too much. Keith doesn’t want to look at him as Lance crosses his arms and leans back against the basin, mouth in a comical O and mischief glinting in his eyes. But this is unfair. Everyone’s allowed to make mistakes. He was young and experimenting. Just because Lance’s youthful experimentation proved he was fine with anyone didn’t make Keith’s any less valid. 

Except he’d known he was completely and totally 100% gay the whole time. He was just scared.

“A beard?” says Lance with a grin.

“Don’t call her a beard. That’s insulting to both of us, plays into stereotypes and the feminisation of gay men.”

Lance raises his hands in surrender but the teasing glint in his eyes doesn’t fade. 

Keith sighs. He turns and heads out of the bathroom, gathering his stuff from around the apartment, packing his bag and his bass for the work day. His beard stays in the sink and Lance turns on the tap to wash it away with a roll of his eyes. 

“Her name was Jo,” Keith says at last, slipping his notebook into his backpack.

“Joe?” says Lance but Keith cuts him off before he can get any further.

“ _ Joanne _ . Don’t make a joke about her having a man’s name. I’ve already had enough of that from Matt.”

Lance just laughs. 

Keith sighs. “We were friends. And I liked her a lot so when she kissed me I just kinda thought… maybe I could make this work.” He slings his bass in it’s gig-bag onto his shoulder and swipes his bike helmet off the floor. “Pretty sure she knew, though.”

Lance isn’t smiling anymore. He’s just staring at the floor with the slightest frown pinching between his brows.  _ Guilt _ . Or, at least, that’s what it looks like and Keith hurries on, not wanting him to linger in it, knowing for himself how uncomfortable it is there. 

“So the song’s something like an apology -- or, well… more like an acknowledgement of wrongdoing, since it doesn’t actually contain the word ‘sorry’.”

“I had no idea,” says Lance softly, picking up his pre-packed messenger bag and turning his back on Keith. Just to grab his coat off the hook, of course. It’s not like he can’t meet his eyes or anything. 

Keith laughs and Lance whips back around to stare at him. And it’s so damn weird because, surely, he should be angry at Lance. Or, at least, feeling hurt that he dug into something that was none of his business -- made light of it, turned it into a joke. 

But he’s laughing. He’s grinning and prodding a bony, calloused finger into Lance’s side to make him jump. 

“What? ‘ _ She hates her work but loves to flirt. Shame she don’t work with me _ ’ wasn’t obvious enough for you?” he says. 

Keith isn’t mad. He’s not even hurt. He’s fine. So Lance grabs his hand and links their fingers, a little bit relieved as always when Keith doesn’t immediately shake him off.

“She sounds like me,” he says with a grin.

“Oh please,” says Keith, squeezing back just a smidge. “You love your job. And your flirting has always been endearingly terrible.”

 

***

 

Keith and Shiro have a radio interview after filming today. With Matt off driving up to Massachusetts to see his sister and Allura meeting up with friends for an afternoon-long shopping marathon, it’s left to Keith to join their frontman in what is, without question, his very least favourite part of the job: promotion.

Words are hard when you can’t go back and revise them a dozen times to make sure they say what you want them to say before tossing them out into the big, bad world.  Give him a solid day and Keith can probably write you a song. It won’t be a very good song, but he could probably write it. But stick him in front of a microphone with no pre-rehearsed script and every single word that has ever passed through his head suddenly withers and dies. It’s a frustrating process. And he usually ends up just getting angry. Shiro learned long ago to rely on the diplomatic Allura or the charismatic Matt when it comes to this sort of shit. 

“Do you even remember how to play it acoustic?” he asks, seemingly out of nowhere, as they ride the elevator up to the station’s studio to meet their host.

It takes Keith half a minute and a couple of confused blinks before he realises what Shiro’s talking about and then he blushes. In a fit of emotional haste he kind of accidentally asked Shiro to change what song they’d be playing at the end of this radio stunt. The fact that he’d made the change to the exact song Lance was talking about that morning had absolutely nothing to do with it. But he’d asked hours ago. Shiro’s a bit late to be bringing up criticism now. 

He shrugs and rubs at his nose to displace the blush. “Sure. I wrote it, didn’t I?” Then, two seconds later: “Fuck. I forgot my capo.”

Shiro laughs and puts a reassuring hand on his brother’s shoulder. Though, Keith feels, the hand is more than a little sarcastic. “I’m sure they’ll have a spare one. Or, genius like you, you can just work around it.”

Keith elbows him in the ribs. 

Shiro laughs again. 

“Jerk,” Keith mutters. 

“But why did you suddenly want to play  _ Homesick _ ? I thought the plan was to play  _ Flayed _ to get the hype up for the video,” says Shiro, completely ignoring any other protests Keith might have.

Keith shrugs again. “Just wanted to play it.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with… you know… You-Know-Who, does it?”

Keith flinches. 

“Oh shit,  _ Keith… _ ” groans Shiro. “You always do this. Every couple of years, you just fall into this guilt but, I keep telling you, she was never angry with you. You apologised, she accepted. You both had a laugh about it. And now it’s in the past. She actually sent me a facebook message last week. Apparently she has tickets for our Indiana show. You should say hi.”

And this whole time Shiro is blabbering on, rambling as he races to reassure his brother, to play his role as the older brother, the shoulder to lean on, Keith is just breathing a sigh of relief. Because he’s talking about Jo. He still has no idea just how much space Lance takes up in his brain. 

He’s not entirely sure why he doesn’t want Shiro to know about Lance. Sure, part of it is wanting to dodge that older-sibling ribbing that is part of their duty when it comes to younger-siblings’ love lives. But other than that… Maybe it’s because Shiro was there the first time. He saw how high Keith’s hopes climbed over just a couple of months and how far they had to fall back down. He saw the mess he was afterwards, he had to watch as Keith kept gluing himself back together, shattering and gluing again until some form of recovery finally stuck. Then he had to watch his baby brother walk around, more glue than anything else, as he pretended nothing had ever happened at all. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t want Shiro to worry. Or maybe it’s just because even he doesn’t know exactly what Lance is to him any more. And the idea that he still has so much power over him despite that scares him. 

“It’s fine, Shiro,” he says at last. “Lord Voldemort had absolutely no role in changing my mind.”

But Shiro’s still giving him worried glances as they meet the radio host and the crew, as they bumble their way through the interview with all the usual questions.

_ (So, correct me if I’m wrong, you two are brothers, right? But… you have different last names. Can I ask…) _

_ (And I can’t be the only one thinking it must be hard to play guitar with a prosthetic arm…) _

_ (This new album has some very personal themes…) _

He’s still giving him glances as the host announces the last break to music before their live performance and they quickly crack out the guitars for the finale while they can.

Even as Keith plucks those first few stepping notes and Shiro sings the opening lines, there’s worry in his features.  

> _ I got misled, mistook, discard _
> 
> _ Everything that I said. _
> 
> _ See, I’m not the type to call you up drunk _
> 
> _ But I got some lies to tell. _

And Keith does try to communicate back, wants so desperately to take his turn as the shoulder to lean on. But the radio crew are right there and there’s only so much he can say with expressions alone. 

There are only so many ways he can say, ‘I’m fine, Shiro, I promise. Confused, but fine.’

 

***

 

Lance isn’t asleep when Keith gets home that night. He might be curled up on the couch with his eyes closed and his back to the room, but he’s not asleep. He might be faking. Just a little bit. Because he’s tired. Somehow, life with Keith has become exhausting. Which is dumb. And irritating. Keith — and memories of Keith — have always been vibrant, technicolour excitement, not this strange grind that his days have become. Guess life becomes tiring, no matter who you’re with, when your every thought has to go through three layers of existence: ‘Man, Keith sure is cute’; ‘wait, no. I can’t think that’; ‘fuck this, I’ll think whatever I damn well please!’

So he’s tired. And, just for one evening, as much as he loves the guy, he wants his thoughts to himself, to not have to correct himself every half a minute. Which is why, the second he heard Keith’s spare key in the door he quickly slammed his laptop shut, rolled over and closed his eyes. 

Keith isn’t making it easy on him, though. With the little sigh he gives when he notices him napping there and his chuckled, ‘Oh, Lance…’ when he sees the plate of quesadillas wrapped in cling-wrap on the kitchen counter. One of them might have a small bite taken out of it but that’s hardly Lance’s fault, he was still hungry after he finished his share and Keith’s were just sitting there getting cold. What else was he supposed to do? But what really undoes him is when Keith abandons the food and walks back to the couch. He brushes Lance’s bangs back from his face with feather-light fingers and delves into the basket placed specifically beside the couch for cushions and throws ( _ ‘They take up too much space on the seats, Keith! They’re called throw cushions because you have to throw them across the room just to sit down.’ _ ) to dig Lance out a blanket and bundle him into a warm cocoon. The final straw is when he leans down and places one chaste kiss on Lance’s forehead. 

That’s too much. What the fuck is this? How is he even still-- They’re ‘not dating’? No. No, fuck off. That’s ridiculous. 

He shoots out a hand to grab Keith’s wrist and, a second later, Keith’s eyes are centimetres from his own, blinking in surprise. 

“You’re awake,” he whispers. 

Lance doesn’t reply. He just shifts his grip to Keith’s jaw and brings their mouths together. Then he does it again. And again. Softening his grabbing fingers to thread them through Keith’s hair, to slide one hand down to his waist and fix the awkward position they’re lying in by pulling him tight against his body. Keith feels barely tangible in his arms. Just a ghost that could fade at any moment. And the fact that he’s kissing back, just as deeply, just as clingingly, doesn’t make this feel any more real. Because tomorrow he’s going to wake up and this beautiful boy is going to still be in his bed, two feet away and untouchable.

“ _ Keith _ ,” Lance breathes against his lips. “Keith. Don’t do this to me anymore.”

Keith’s eyebrows pinch, a moment of confusion, before he juts his chin back out, hoping to catch Lance’s lips again. But Lance leans back.

“Please, Keith.” He sounds far more desperate than he would like but just as desperate as he feels. “What are we even doing?”

And that’s when Keith gets it. Lance feels his hands twitch, feels them pull back a fraction before very consciously returning to their place on his body. He watches as Keith bites his bottom lip and frowns and tries not to meet his eye.

“I still want you,” Lance says, offering rescue.

Keith shakes his head. “We shouldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“You don’t know me,” he whispers. 

Lance scoffs. “That didn’t stop us last time.”

Keith turns away at that, pushing up onto an elbow to gain the higher ground and glare down at the other man. 

“Yeah and that worked out great, didn’t it?” He sounds bitter, of course he does. Keith always sounds bitter when he’s scared. 

“I know you, Keith,” he spits back, grabbing Keith’s face in both hands, forcing him to look at him rather than dance around his gaze with frowns and rolled eyes and glares. “You’re a fucking mess. You love music more than you love yourself. You’re always deciding you’re not good enough, that you have to be better -- you’re always learning, polishing yourself. But Keith… You’re perfect the way you are. You might be reactionary and short tempered and make terrible choices in haircuts--”

“Hey!”

“-- Other people might scare the living shit out of you and I  _ don’t care _ . I don’t care that we’re definitely going to have this conversation again. I don’t care that ten years of foster care have fucked up your head so bad there’s no going back. I could not give less of a shit about any of that. Just so long as when you kiss me like that, I know it’s not a lie.”

“ _ Lance-- _ ” Keith starts but Lance is on a roll now. He’s out of control and the words are pouring out of him like a volcano. 

“I just want to be with you. That’s all I want. I want to come home to our shitty apartment and listen to you play bass for hours. I want to face the wrath of our neighbours with you when they bang on the door at 3am to complain about the noise. I want you to teach me every recipe you’ve learnt in these last six years. I want to wake up with you in my arms and not have to sneakily pull away because you might be uncomfortable. I--” He chokes, takes a deep breath, and locks his eyes with Keith again. “Keith…” he whispers. “I can’t keep doing this.”

There’s silence then. As Lance tries to breathe again, not letting his eyes shift from Keith’s face. And Keith removes Lance’s hands from his cheeks without a word. He looks at the floor and folds his hands in his lap. He swallows, takes a peek at Lance from the corner of his eye, and looks back at the floor. 

“Do you--” he wipes a hand down his face and tries again. “Do you want me to go?”

“No!” Lance shouts, frustration shocking through him like electricity. “I want you to  _ talk  _ to me! What are you doing? What do you want from me? Because I’m willing to give you literally anything you ask for. I can’t-- I’ve never been good at saying no to you, Keith, and that sure as fuck hasn’t changed.”

Keith scratches at his palms with a frown. The clock keeps on ticking to fill the silence. Lance can hear his heart hammer in his ears. Finally, Keith takes one of Lance’s hands and laces their fingers together. He settles them both on his knee, thumb making steady sweeps across the back of Lance’s hand.

“I like this,” he says quietly. “And I like living with you -- being in your space. I like when we kiss and the way you look at me with y-your,  _ uh _ , your beautiful eyes when you think I’m being dumb. Your whole face kind of goes slack, like you almost can’t believe it, but your eyes are still bright and laughing and I… I just like it. And I like when you ride behind me on my bike, when I can feel you trembling with adrenaline and fear. I like that you still ride with me even though it scares you. I like how compassionate you are -- how empathetic and kind and understanding…” 

Lance squeezes his hand when it looks like Keith is stuck, his breath shallow and his eyes wet. He sniffs and rubs at his nose with his free hand. Still, as soon as he tries to speak again, his voice cracks and the first tear breaks free. 

“I just like you, Lance,” his voice warbles. Keith is not a pretty cryer. “And I don’t think I could give y-- this up again. But… Fuck… I-- I’m going to screw it up somehow.” It’s only as the words leave his mouth that Keith realises:  _ Oh. This is what I was actually afraid of all along _ . All that delay, all that avoidance — avoiding so hard he never even truly noticed what it was he was avoiding. But there it was, laid out so simply. Keith is afraid of failing, just like he always is. He’s not even sure why he’s so surprised. This is just the same old regular shit. And suddenly his heart finds its way into his mouth. 

“It’s going to be just like last time and I’m going to do something stupid or I’ll get scared and run away or… or… I don’t even know, but I’ll find some way to ruin it. And I thought, as long as there wasn’t anything to ruin I couldn’t-- But that’s not true, is it? This is already a thing. It’s just a thing without a name.”

It’s Lance’s thumb making the soft strokes across the other’s hand now, as a hard lump starts forming in the pit of his stomach. It feels an awful lot like guilt. But Lance can’t see how he’s done anything wrong. Perhaps he could have gone about it slightly better but this is a conversation that needed to happen at some point. Keith’s method of ignoring things until they went away clearly wasn’t working. It’s probably the tears. To see Keith cry — to be so frightened of himself that he cries — when it’s  _ Keith  _ who is so good and so deserving and who has managed to lock down his every emotion over the years, only allowing them out at scheduled intervals for writing purposes… Lance would have to be inhumane to not feel anything at all. So he wipes Keith’s eyes and kisses his face and curls himself into his side. It’s only when he has his face buried against Keith’s neck, that trembles with his every breath as he fights back his own emotions once again, that Lance feels the courage to speak. 

“Keith, baby, I can’t promise that we’ll last forever. I can’t tell the future. But as long as you want to be with me and I want to be with you, it doesn’t make sense not to try.”

“And if I fuck up again?”

“Then I’ll tell you you’ve fucked up and we can fix it,” says Lance with a wobbly smile. A thought reaches him and it shifts into a frown. “Keith, you don’t really believe last time was your fault, do you?”

Keith’s snotty laugh feels like a kick in the chest. “Well, you weren’t the one who broke off all contact!”

“You were hurt! I hurt you with my stupid ability to say everything except things that need to be said.”

Keith opens his mouth to argue but Lance sighs and he closes it again. 

“Come on,” says Lance wearily, pulling at Keith’s shirt until they’re both lying down again. “If we’re going to argue about this again, let’s at least do it while cuddling.” He grabs the blanket from the floor where it fell and pulls it over them both.

“No,” Keith whispers, tangling their legs and throwing an arm over Lance’s waist. “It was both of our faults. I don’t want to argue anymore.”

Lance is struck yet again by the minute changes in Keith that have snowballed up into this slightly different person. Once Keith would have argued for as long as Lance would let him. He would have worked himself up to a full-blown shouting match and, even then, he probably wouldn’t be satisfied until hours had passed and the guilt had time to set in. 

Once it would have been only sensible to tuck Keith’s head in under his chin when in such a position but now, now that Keith is the taller one with his feet already dangling off the end of the couch, Lance has to be content winding his arms around the other’s torso and wriggling down a few inches to press his face back into Keith’s neck. He’s starting to think that’s where he belongs; where it’s warm and smells like Keith, the stubble grown out over the working day a rough texture against his cheek, and the sound of Keith’s breathing beneath his ear. 

“Your fault, my fault, the foster care system’s fault, capitalism’s fault…” he mumbles, sleep finally coming for him in truth. “But that’s enough. Let’s just cuddle.”

“Lance,” Keith whispers some fifteen minutes later. “I definitely still love you.”

But the only reply he gets is the soft sound of his boyfriend’s snoring.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, the filming of the video was supposed to take up a great deal more of this fic but... I guess it just never really came up until now. And it kind of never comes up again.   
> Really not happy with this chapter but hopefully it gave you some of what you're looking for. Let me know what you think :)))
> 
> ALSO: A fair few of you have said, throughout this series, that I've got them into CatB. Should I just link my whole writing playlist for this series? It does have a lot of catb but there are a handful of other bands there that you might like that are in the same vein. It does kind of change a lot, though, and my anxiety is shouting at me to justify every song choice but if people want to see/hear it I can link it in the next chapter? Let me know!
> 
> See you all in two days! (I'll try not to get distracted by other things again)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaah! Comments! I want so much to reply! To thank and over-explain in my usual way! But I'm still trying to finish writing the fic before I do. It's left me feeling a lot like an academically focused parent. 'No, no. You have to finish your homework before you can go out and play with the other kids!'
> 
> Lyrics:  
> The first one I quite clearly made up.  
> And then there's just another little snippet of [Rango](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7tsybcupk8&list=PLdjcZbWbiPbKyER1kXEtGiu8zJTXFtCso&index=9&t=0s) by CatB. (as always. <\-- that's Swoons. [THIS](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNw8HQbhHhg) is album version.)
> 
> But a couple of people _were_ interested in my writing playlist. So you can find that [HERE](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdjcZbWbiPbKyER1kXEtGiu8zJTXFtCso) (hopefully that link works...) Criteria for being added to the playlist include: songs I can imagine Castle playing, songs that are explicitly mentioned in the fic, songs that are lyrically appropriate, songs that are tonally appropriate, songs that are emotionally appropriate -- safe to say, there's kind of a range in there... If I have a not-studio version of a song in there (a cover, live version, etc.), it's probably either because I prefer it to the original or for some fic-specific reason. Okay. That explanation will have to sate my anxiety. This is also too long for beginning notes. Oops.
> 
> Enjoy!

Lance loves Keith’s hands. He’d forgotten what they were like. In the years in between, he’d looked back on long, slender pianist’s fingers. But Keith’s hands aren’t like that at all. His fingers are short and strong, flexible and calloused from years against steel strings, nails either trimmed or chewed down to the beds. And Lance loves them. Loves how worn they are, how used, shaped by his craft and his passions and the sheer anxious mess that is  _ Keith _ . 

He worms one finger into the grip of the hand that’s currently sitting, fisted on his chest. Keith grumbles in his sleep but, otherwise, doesn’t respond and Lance has to settle for no more than that. He traces the fingers of his other hand up and down Keith’s side until the frown melts off his face again.

It’s always shocking how innocent Keith looks in his sleep. With his smooth, pale skin and thick dark lashes, fluffy hair framing a peaceful face. He looks five years younger and twice as happy and Lance can only wish that he could keep such an expression on his face while he was conscious. 

Some time during the night they’d abandoned the couch. It really was too small for two full-grown men. And, sometime during the night, Keith -- always a restless sleeper -- had pulled his shirt over his head. And, sure, Lance wasn’t entirely certain it was an intentional decision but he pulled his own shirt off to join him, if only for that glorious skin-on-skin warmth when Keith settled back against him, head pillowed on Lance’s shoulder and his beautiful, rough hands laying over Lance’s ribs. 

He can feel Keith’s latest tattoo; a wilting rose surrounded by a complex, geometric pattern that swirled around the stem like a ribbon or some dark magic in ancient runes. Still new enough to be embossed from the surface of his skin as Lance keeps his fingers moving, feather-light and reverent, up and down his soft side. That wasn’t there the last time they lay together like this. Neither was the monochrome waterfall that tumbles over his shoulder to pool in the hollow of his collarbone. But, for once, Lance doesn’t care. Not about those lonely years or all the life Keith lived without him, all the days they could have spent together if they’d just used their words like the big kids they supposedly are. Because Keith chose him. Again. Shit-scared and hesitant, Keith still chose Lance again.

 

***

 

“Keith, babe, could you maybe not just play the same riff over and over again? I know you’re working something out but it’s been almost an hour now and my brain is about to start coming out my ears.”

“Oh, sorry. Should I add some lyrics? Spice it up a little?”

“No. Kei--”

> _ Lance is in the kitchen _

“Keith!”

> _ He’s frying an egg. _
> 
> _ Lance is in the kitchen _
> 
> _ Gonna put it on bread. _

“Keith, I swear to fucking god…”

> _ Ooh! Lance is in the kitchen _
> 
> _ He’s put the pan down. _
> 
> _ Lance is in the kitchen _
> 
> _ Oh, shit, that’s a frown. _

“It is only the knowledge of how much that bass means to you that is stopping me from tackling you right now. So prepare yourself for a slow-motion tackle that gives you time to put it somewhere safe.”

 

***

 

There’s music playing when Lance opens the door. He’s getting used to that being the norm. God, he’d love for that to always be the norm. But Keith’s concert is next week. Then he’ll be gone. It’s not the usual music, though. Not the warbled, shitty-quality audio out of a phone’s speakers or the quiet strumming of an acoustic guitar. Not even the deep and lonely pluck of a solitary bass trying to work through a new passage. It’s a stepping keyboard that stops and starts, repeats and stops again, and a woman’s voice. Allura d’Altea is sitting on his tiny, two-person dining table, feet up on a chair and keyboard spread across her lap as she mumbles through the same few bars over and over again.

> _ Blah-b-blah to wait… _
> 
> _ ‘till she gets you on your own. _
> 
> _ So she can make you make mistakes… _
> 
> _ … and she turns into a gnome? _

“-- Fuck, I don’t know. I’ve lost it,” she says in her usual crisp, clear voice. 

Keith, perched on the arm of the couch and plucking his way through the same section in near-silence on his acoustic guitar, looks up at her then with tired eyes. “Well,” he says. “It’s still more than I have. And, who knows, maybe it’s time we started branching out into more gnome-based audiences?”

Lance can’t help snorting a laugh and they both finally notice him standing there in the open doorway. Keith smiles when he sees him, tired eyes and all, and Lance feels his heart melt a little. There can’t be a more lovely sight on this Earth than Keith right then -- half his hair tied up in some spouting unicorn’s horn to keep it out of his face, however many days worth of grease coating his skin, bags beneath his bloodshot eyes, fingers trembling with caffeine, and the most honest smile in existence on his face. How did he ever manage to leave for work this morning when this was going to be sitting at home for him all day?

“Bit stuck there, babe?” he says, grin still in place as he plants a wet kiss against Keith’s cheek and plops down onto the couch behind him, back pressed against Keith’s own. 

Keith just grunts in agreement.

“This song is kicking our collective arses,” Allura clarifies.

“Hmm,” Lance says thoughtfully, digging into the paper bag he got from the bakery on the way home. He pulls something out and offers it over his shoulder. “Chocolate croissant?”

Keith, not even shifting his eyes from his guitar, takes a bite with snapping teeth and makes no move to grab it. Lance takes it back and digs in. 

Allura’s fingers are already tripping up and down the keys again, trying to find an order that they work in. Keith leans heavily back against Lance, his weight warm and solid. 

“You know,” says Lance softly, trying not to disturb her. “According to your wikipedia page, you’re lactose intolerant.”

“Really? says Keith around a mouthful of very buttery croissant, milk chocolate smeared across the corner of his bottom lip. He tilts his head over his shoulder, mouth open like a baby bird, and Lance silently offers him the half-eaten pastry again. One bite and he’s satisfied for the moment once more. “That would be inconvenient.”

“Pretty sure this’d be fine, though,” Lance says. “It’s not like it’s a milkshake or anything.”

Keith just hums, head bent back over his guitar. Lance leans his own head back against the nape of Keith’s neck and closes his eyes. And Keith gets back to work, body warmed and with a chocolate coated smile.

 

***

 

“I’m worried about my cat.”

“Your cat?”

“Yeah. Red. She’s a terror. My parents don’t exactly live nearby and any friends I have in the city I don’t trust with her. So I have to put her in a cattery when we go on tour. But this is going to be the longest I’ve ever left her. What if I get back and she hates me? Or she’s forgotten me? Or she never trusts me again?”

“Keith, you absolute pure bean.”

“What? I’m being serious.”

“I know. That’s what makes it all the more beautiful. You know… you could always leave her with me when you’re on the East coast. Make New York your base and just come back between shows. So you could see her… and me. I mean, there’d be some crazy transit times but… I’m sure we could make it work.”

“... Lance, you absolute pure bean.”

“ _ Ke-ith!  _ Stop laughing!”

“You know I love you.”

 

***

 

It would be easy to assume Lance is the cuddly one in their relationship. He’s a pretty touchy-feely kind of guy. And Keith is all sharp edges like volcanic glass. But Lance is touchy with everyone — arms always thrown around people and sharp chin balanced on heads and shoulders and, really, whatever body part is available to balance on; he’ll lean against anyone, nap against Hunk’s shoulder while still standing up as Hunk struggles through making his physically affectionate best friend some damn breakfast so he can take his meds and get out of his house. But Keith is so much more discerning, such a stricter gatekeeper when it comes to who he lets close to him that Lance is almost his only source of human contact. Of course, there’s always Shiro who’ll ruffle his hair and slap him on the back but his brother learnt long ago that Keith isn’t comfortable with his hugs except for those few rare occasions when he’ll initiate one himself. Allura will sometimes throw her arms around him after a particularly good show, skin sticky with sweat and her heart still beating wildly in her chest. And when he stiffens in her grip, she just shoves his shoulder and grins. 

“You’ve got to get used to it sometime!” she’d singsong at him. “The terrifying touch of another living being!”

Matt just fistbumps him these days with a grin. At least he gets him. 

So, of course he touches people. It would be impossible to go through life without doing it. But Lance still needs to fill in the gaps, the remaining 90% of Necessary Human Contact required for health and sanity. 

And that is exactly why it’s entirely unsurprising that he hooks his fingers through Lance’s belt-loops as he passes him on the couch and pulls him into his lap. Lance, on his way to check the nachos in the oven and understandably surprised by this sudden change in direction, lets out a little squeak as he trips back the way he came, legs pinwheeling to keep him upright, and lands heavily with an ‘oof’.

“You okay, Keithy?” he murmurs after he’s managed to unknot himself, one knee either side of Keith’s hips and arms draped over his shoulders. 

Keith hasn’t said a word while Lance was doing his untangling, just clung to his boyfriend like a drowning man. Even when addressed directly, he only hums an affirmation and presses his nose firmly into Lance’s neck. He’s like a cat with his affection; always leading with his face. 

“Okay. It’s snuggle time, then. And if the nachos burn I’m only going to cry a little bit,” says Lance, settling in, dropping his head onto Keith’s shoulder and closing his eyes. His boyfriend’s arms are tight around his waist as the sun slowly sets the world a burning fuschia through the open window behind them, one last hurrah before it finally retires for the day, and the sound of the irate traffic floods in to fill the spaces between words. 

“New York sucks,” grumbles Keith at last, lips moving against Lance’s skin. “It’s cold and grey and the streets steam like there’s a giant monster living in your sewers. I miss LA. And my cat. I want Red.”

Lance runs his hands up and down Keith’s spine soothingly — or as much as he can reach of it against the backrest — and hums his agreement. There’s not much he can say to that. Because, shit, of course Keith’s going to miss home. And he’s not even halfway through this tour. 

“I know, baby,” he says eventually. And he does. Lance is absolutely no stranger to homesickness. 

Except then Keith opens his mouth again and the words that come out are entirely unexpected. 

“I don’t want to go home.”

Lance’s hands still. “What?” he croaks. 

Keith draws back to look at him with an expression that clearly reads ‘you heard me’. 

“New York sucks but you’re here,” he finally grumbles when it becomes clear Lance isn’t about to let him go free and Lance’s heart makes an immediate escape attempt up his throat. 

Until suddenly he’s kissing Keith. More teeth than tongue or lips, hair gripped in both fists. It’s just one of those moments, so full and twisted and heavy with  _ emotion  _ — a punch ‘straight to the feels’, as the kids would say — that Lance finds himself three steps back in his own brain. And maybe Keith takes a moment to respond, eyes wide and body rigid, but when he melts against Lance — when he grips him at the waist, decides that isn’t close enough and wraps his arms bodily around him, one arm pressed along his spine to pull him closer and closer and closer still — it’s enough for Lance’s entire world to stop spinning and just stay suspended in this one moment. He softens his grip on Keith’s hair and cups his jaw, smooths his hands down his shoulders and onto his sides. Keith’s tongue is hot against his, sending goosebumps over Lance’s whole body as it brushes fleetingly across the roof of his mouth. Keith belly is hot against his as they both arch closer, hips begging to begin their well practiced grind. And still their hands move on. Lance’s shift restlessly. Nowhere will give him the sensation he craves. From Keith’s sides to the strong thighs beneath him, over a muscled back, his neck, his face, his shoulders, his arms. Keith’s move languidly. An oil spill over Lance’s skin, black and creeping and deadly, sticky and warm even through his shirt as they seep up his back, sooth the tension from his shoulders and neck and up into his hair—

“Glegh!” Keith breaks the moment, wrenching his hands free of Lance’s scalp. “ _ What  _ is in your hair?”

Lance shrugs, half a teasing smirk on his face. “Baby oil.”

Keith stares at him incredulously and Lance smiles. 

“Winter dandruff, Keith. It’s a killer.”

Keith just makes another disgusted noise and glares at the pale piss-coloured oil now staining his hands. But Lance doesn’t exactly need any more encouragement anyway. 

“I fucking hate winter,” he says. “My skin is dry. My hair is dry. My  _ soul  _ is dry, Keith! It’s windy and the streets smell weird and my tan fades until I look like a walking corpse. I had to start using baby shampoo this year because my regular brand was too harsh on my overly dry scalp! Baby shampoo! Do you know how long it took me to find a sulfate-free baby shampoo? A weirdly long time. What the fuck? Surely most’ve them would be sulfate-free. These are tiny, baby scalps! Be gentle with them!”

He’s still talking, flinging his hands in the air, rolling his eyes angrily. Most of his complaints are lost on Keith (a heathen who only ever conditions his hair if the shampoo he’s using happens to be 2-in-1) but, shit, he’s still really enjoying the life and light in Lance’s eyes as he rambles on. The baby oil on his hands is forgotten because all Keith wants to do in that moment is thread his fingers back through Lance’s hair and pull him closer again. This ridiculous, beautiful man, the sun constrained by the winter, with too many feelings about sodium laureth sulfate. Fuck, he’s so perfect. 

But then someone knocks at the door and they both freeze.

Lance is awfully comfy on Keith’s lap by now. He really doesn’t want to move. Especially when he feels so warm and loved as Keith scrapes his fingers absentmindedly up and down his thighs, staining his pyjamas with oil, even as his eyes stay glued in a glare at the door. 

“Lance?” Hunk’s voice comes through the door and he breathes a sigh of relief. “Are you naked in there?”

Keith looks at him, prompting him to move, to stand up and go open the door. But, goddammit, he still really doesn’t want to. Not when he could stay right there in Keith’s lap -- the lap that the man himself had pulled him into -- where it’s so warm and inviting and he can feel Keith’s breath against his neck, feel his lungs expand and contract beneath his hands, keep him trapped here on Lance’s ratty couch so he can’t disappear to the next city on his tour in four days like he’s planning to. 

So he just tilts his head like he’s confused and raises an eyebrow at Keith’s look. 

“It’s just that,” Hunk bumbles on, “you remember that one time in college? When I came back to the room and you were, uh, in a  _ compromisi _ \-- Oh, hey, Mrs Carmichael. Sorry, was I being too loud?”

Keith snorts into his fist, making a poor attempt at pretending it was a cough.

“Hunk you have a key. Just come in!” Lance shouts at the door, slapping Keith on the arm with pink ears.

“But what if you’re naked in there? I can’t take that kind of trauma again!”

“I’m not naked. Open the fu--” He suddenly remembers Mrs Carmichael is apparently right outside. He doesn’t need to give her any more reasons to murder him, not with Keith’s apparent inability to go two minutes without touching a musical instrument. “Open the door!”

Keith’s hands are hot on his hips, soothing thumbs brushing against the skin he’s hitched up Lance’s shirt to expose. And maybe Lance should get up anyway. He might be wearing clothes but Hunk will probably still count this as traumatising. He groans as he hears the key in the lock, darting down to place one kiss against Keith’s neck, another on his jaw before he goes to stand up. Turns out, Keith isn’t quite as ready to let him go as he pretended because he shifts his grip from Lance’s hips to his ass and surges up to plant one last, dirty kiss against his mouth.

“Keith,” Lance whispers just as Hunk’s key clicks the lock open. It’s meant to sound like a warning. It comes out more like a prayer. 

Keith just smirks. 

Hunk squeaks before Lance has time to get up, throwing his one empty hand over his eyes. “Oh heck, Lance! You promised he weren’t naked!”

“Hunk! Really?” He sighs. “Clearly wearing clothes right now.” He’s still scrambling to his feet, though. “Pidge?” 

“On the bus. Last I heard she’d just crossed over the border from Connecticut.” Hunk takes a peek between his fingers and, finding at least a foot between Keith and Lance, finally drops his hand from his face. 

“So give her another hour, maybe two. Got it,” says Lance. 

They just stand there for a long moment. The door falls shut behind Hunk’s back, the mechanism letting out its barely audible hiss as it slows the heavy wood until finally they’re shut off from the outside world again with a subtle ‘click’. The back of Lance’s thighs are still warm from where he was just pressed against Keith, he can still feel hands on his ass. Hunk just looks at him and then to Keith and back to Lance again. And he suddenly realises this is the first time they’ve been in the same room since those three minutes after  _ Castle of Lions _ played at that festival -- the first time they’ve met while Hunk actually has full faculty of his senses, not out of his mind with worry and confusion, excitement and anticipation. 

“Oh!” says Lance. “Hunk, you know Keith. Keith, this is my best friend Hunk again. You met briefly backstage that one time.”

“Yeah,” says Keith, offering no more.

“Hi,” says Hunk with a little wave.

Lance can feel his face heating now. Why did this feel so official? Like introducing his boyfriend to his parents or something. Is that how he sees Hunk? Really? Sure, Hunk’s a bit of a Mum-Friend but he’s not Lance’s real mum. It’s probably the fact that Lance managed to bundle up every memory of Keith for six years, kept them to himself, hoarded them and polished them, without ever telling his best friend a thing until he climbed up on stage and sucked Keith’s face in front of 20,000 people. Or, you know, Lance could just be being dumb. That’s always an option. 

He lets his tongue loose and hopes he can ramble his way out of this one.

“Okay, so there’s nachos in the oven and Keith made a whole thing of some strange cocktail. It’s on the bench just behind you there.” Hunk wheels around to look at the blue and green glass jug full of some bright orange liquid, mint leaves floating around in it, but Lance doesn’t stop for even half a second. “It’s good. I promise. It just doesn’t have a name.”

“I kind of made it up as I went,” Keith mumbles quietly and Lance finds himself nodding twelve times in quick succession. 

“There are chips in the cupboard and beer in the fridge,” he stumbles on. “We’ve probably-- maybe got some dip lying around somewhere… Make yourself at home. I mean, just pretend Keith isn’t here. Actually, no, shit, I didn’t mean that. Just… act like you always do when you’re here.”

Hunk lifts up the stack of tupperware boxes in his hand awkwardly. “I brought stuff for pizza.” 

And while, ordinarily, Lance would be ecstatic, delirious with joy at the prospect of Hunk’s homemade pizza (complete with secret recipe sauce, four different cheese options including the buffalo mozzarella that he gets from some unknown source — probably a crack dealer, given its addictive properties — and any topping you could possibly think of), his panicked brain doesn’t even register the words. 

He just waves a hand through the air and says, “Awesome,” dismissively before doing what he always does when things get just a little too uncomfortable. He runs away.

“Well,” he says, “gotta go take a shower before Pidge gets here. Can someone make sure the nachos don’t catch fire? Thanks.” And with that, he’s gone. Now hidden safely behind the door to the bathroom where he can breathe again.

 

In the silence he leaves behind, Keith and Hunk watch each other with blank faces. Eventually, without a word exchanged between them, Keith pulls his feet up on the couch and digs his phone out of his pocket, trying to look busy, and Hunk strolls into the kitchenette. It’s prickly, the feeling of Hunk behind him. Even if his gaze is focused entirely on the contents of the oven, on the dough he’s rolling out beneath his hands, the sauce he’s warming on the stove, Keith can still feel his presence pricking at the back of his neck, raising the hairs there, as he consciously looks disengaged. 

For his part, Hunk is trying to reconcile this man -- all shaggy hair and ripped jeans and awkward, twitching fingers -- with all the videos he’s seen of him online -- highlighted in stage lights with fans screaming his name, fingers sure and practiced and tailored for the limelight -- and then both those images with what Lance has told him in the last few weeks. In all honesty, he’s pretty sure they’re actually three different people. It doesn’t seem possible that awkward-couch-Keith and confident-stage-Keith and adorable-boyfriend-Keith could all be the same person. And yet… apparently, that’s the reality. 

“Look, man.” Hunk breaks the silence eventually. “I don’t know what he’s told you but Lance only really explained --” he waves his dough covered hand absently through the air, leaving a small rain of flour in its path. “-- this whole thing to me after you two met up again. And I’m pretty sure he left a lot out. So you don’t have to worry about me, I dunno,  _ judging _ you or whatever. Because yeah, I’m going to be pretty ticked off at you if you hurt him again but, according to Lance, the blame for last time is spread between so many people that it’s not really anyone’s fault. Y’know?”

Keith is slowly uncurling from his shell on the couch, phone drifting away from his face and confused frown growing between his brows. And it’s kind of like going to a beautiful waterhole and being completely awestruck at its picturesque majesty until someone tells you there are crocodiles in the water. Because, dammit, that was not even a thing he was worried about and now it’s all he can think of. It’s not like he was any more afraid of Hunk than he’s been of any other near-stranger. The thought of him being any sort of real threat hadn’t even crossed his mind. People are just confusing and it’s better to stay away from them, in general. So this whole monologue with reassuring hand gestures and soft eyes had been totally unnecessary until Hunk brought the whole thing up. Because, when you boil it down to its essence, Keith just hadn’t known what to say to him and nothing more. 

So he shrugs and tries to push the crocodiles back under the surface where he can forget about them again. “It’s cool. Uh, yeah. You guys just… do what you gotta do.” It’s lucky he’s still facing away from Hunk when he grimaces at his own awkwardness. 

He’s saved by a knock at the door and Allura spilling through with a plate full of dips and three boutique store bags dangling from her elbow. Lance reemerges from the bathroom smelling of coconut and citrus, skin glassy smooth and a content expression on his face. But he settles in the kitchen with Hunk, putting together pizzas with a playful smile and chattering banter, sipping from his mug (Hunk and Keith have already claimed all two of his glasses) of brilliantly coloured cocktail with a little more enthusiasm than is warranted so early in the night. Keith curls himself back into his shell and digs out his phone again. Shiro somehow arrives without anyone noticing until it’s just like he’s been there the whole time. Pidge and Matt stumble in fifteen minutes after that, loud and raucous, bearing cupcakes from the supermarket and a six-pack of cheap cider. 

Predictably, things descend into chaos from there. 

From the moment Matt thrusts his measuring cup of cocktail into the air and shouts, “To finishing a damn long video!” things start to beautifully unravel in that unplanned, boisterous, chattering but utterly inevitable way they always do when good friends and alcohol are involved. 

Pidge doesn’t put her butt on an actual chair the entire time, sitting on counters or tables or in the basket of blankets, cackling louder and louder every time someone even suggests she calm down a little. Lance, rather unusually, just quietly drinks until something snaps and he’s crawling into Keith’s lap, rubbing a cheek against his biceps and weeping. 

“Strong boy give  _ goooood  _ hugs,” he insists through his tears. To which Keith reacts by silently scooping him up and dumping him in Hunk’s arms while Matt roars with laughter and rolls about on the floor. 

At one point, Shiro suggests maybe putting some Netflix or something on to distract the, uh… more  _ energetic  _ members of their group. But it just leads to Allura shaking her head, holding up her hands and saying, “Nuh-uh.  _ Game of Thrones, _ ” as Pidge bounces off the walls chanting, “ _ Stranger Things _ !  _ Stranger Things _ !  _ Stranger Things _ !” and Hunk trying to have his own, less intense, opinion of  _ Brooklyn 99  _ heard. 

Matt is still on the floor. Only now he’s given up on laughing and is seeing how fast he can roll from one side of the room to the other. He’s knocked over the folding screen that separates Lance’s ‘bedroom’ from the rest of the apartment, a pot plant, the Playstation, and a small pile of cardboard boxes before anyone can stop him. 

For a long while Shiro was darting between them all, voice soothing and hand gestures placating, shushing and calming and generally reminding them all that the walls are thin and Lance has neighbours. But now he just sits in a corner, simultaneously nursing his own soup bowl of cocktail and glaring at what remains of Keith’s concoction on the kitchen counter. 

 

Finally, silence. It’s that strange time of night between about midnight and 3am where it’s impossible to guess what the exact time is. Outside, the city that never sleeps rumbles on. Inside, Lance’s tiny studio apartment is strewn with food and bodies like the world’s strangest war has just come to a close. Matt is grumbling to himself in the time-out corner. Shiro is near-silently beginning to clean up Lance’s kitchen. And everyone else is draped like sloths across the furniture, asleep, as Lance crawls his way back onto Keith and presses a kiss to the underside of his jaw.

Keith groans where he’s lying on the rug and blindly reaches for Lance’s head, patting it three times like he’s a child that’s been playing in the mud all day; fond and endearing but could you maybe not touch me right now? Lance rolls off him, settling for hugging only one arm instead.

“I didn’t realise you were awake,” he murmurs.

“I’m not,” Keith replies, his voice sounding a little like a raccoon crawled into his throat and died. “I’m dead.”

Lance snorts a laugh, presses his smile against Keith’s shoulder and Keith hefts his weight to the side so that the arm Lance has stolen can slip underneath him and curl around his waist instead. He hums in appreciation as Keith’s thumb sweeps over his ribs unconsciously. The whole room flashes bright white for a moment, casting Shiro’s shadow sharp but warped over the kitchen cabinets, and, three seconds later, somewhere in the distance, a wave of thunder follows. Lance just burrows into Keith’s warm, solid side as the rain starts to fall. Keith tightens his hold around him a fraction.

“This was nice,” Lance sighs quietly. 

It’s not entirely clear what he’s talking about. The cuddles? The party? The drinking? The friends? Knowing Lance, it’s probably all of the above and it’s the way they all came together -- the way that their two worlds could meet so seamlessly, mesh and intermingle until their not separate worlds at all. And at the centre of it all is still Keith and Lance, Lance and Keith, just as they were before -- just as they are now and, hopefully, just as they always will be.

Keith just hums in agreement, eyes shut and the sound of the rain whipping against the windows in his ears like white-noise. 

“Well,” says Shiro softly, hanging the dishcloth back on its hook, “Looks like we’re definitely staying the night now.”

“Feel free, man,” Lance laughs. “Grab any bit of floor you want and get comfy. There are blankets and that in the cupboard.”

Keith makes some wordless noise again and Lance smiles.

“Come on, babe. Let’s kick Hunk off and steal the bed. We deserve it. Residents’ perks,” he says.

Three minutes later sees the entire apartment asleep, lulled by the sound of the rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Casually giving Lance my skin-type so I don't have to do any extra research... I may have written a lot of this chapter while I had baby oil in my hair and I didn't want to leave the house... BUT, just saying, depending on the cause of your dandruff, masking your hair with oil might actually make it worse so make sure you do a bit of research first. 
> 
> SO! Chapter 5. I wrote about 1,500 words of it yesterday. If I write another 1,500 words today (which is looking unlikely), 1,500 words tomorrow, and a final 1,500 words the day after I might just be able to get it out on time. But... yeah... that's unlikely. So be prepared for the next chapter to be a three day wait at the least.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So.... I'm not done. You might notice that the chapter count has gone up. I've had to split this last chapter in two and I didn't really want to post the first half until I'd finished the second and I could edit them as one chapter, you know? But the new Catfish and the Bottlemen album came out today and, given how much this series has to thank them for, I figured I should probably give you a little something to celebrate. So, here's a little more of this thing.
> 
> Lyrics:  
> Only lyrics this chapter are the ones I wrote myself, unfortunately. Sorry, those are the ones you're stuck with...

In the dark, the music is so loud that Lance can actually hear clearer if he covers his ears. This is the first time he’s ever been backstage at a concert. The experience is something else. The lights stab through the dark of the wings unpredictably, leaving him with spots in his vision every time. They flash and flicker in an epileptic fury. The crowd is surprisingly quiet -- he’s so used to being among them, to hearing their screams and their singing right by his ears, feeling them undulating against his sides in a synchronised wave, sticky and reeking but ultimately united by the music that brought them here, true equals amongst the throng. But the sound of the band is too loud back here. Keith’s bass rumbles through Lance’s chest, Allura’s drums have his heart jumping in time to the beat, and he can feel Matt’s guitar run through one ear and out the other, causing yet unseen mischief in the space in between. The music has his bones vibrating, his pupils dilating. Shiro’s voice sounds different from back here than it does from the crowd. Somehow more distant, despite the volume, and with the faintest echo. 

And through it all, as Lance stands frozen in awe beside Pidge-the-backstage-veteran, who is looking up at him with the smuggest expression of, ‘I know, right?’ on her face, the crew scurries about unseen and unheard. Dressed all in black and decked out with headsets they hurry back and forth, back and forth, checking that the connections are holding, that the lights are as they should be, that the band is still appropriately lit and heard and seen -- the brighter the band shines, the further the crew are cloaked in shadow and Lance can barely breathe with the sheer wonder he is experiencing in this moment. The surreality of it. The disconnect from his day to day life and what he considers normal. 

He lets out a little laugh, more sigh than anything else, and shifts his attention back to the stage. Shiro’s prosthetic glints in the white lights as they sweep across him, as they run across the stage, flash neon turquoise, pink, green, and back to white. His arm pumps resolutely across the face of his guitar and Matt shoots him a euphoric grin as he steps up to the front of the stage to take his solo. A roar rises from the crowd and Lance feels his heart rise with it. And then-- it’s done. With two beats against the skin of the drums, the song comes to an abrupt end and the roar erupts into cheers, screams, wolf-whistles.

“Thank you!” Shiro shouts. Even with a microphone, he’s almost drowned out in the noise. Lance can only imagine how loud they would be if he were still standing amongst them. “This next one’s got a new video comin’ out soon.” More screams, half of them will already know which song this is. “Yeah, you know it! It’s not quite out as a single yet but I’m trusting you all know exactly what I’m talking about. And I’m gonna need your help with it. The one bit that goes, ‘Aaa-aah-oooooh-aaah’.”

Matt jumps in to strum through the melody of the section as the crowd splits between the half that want to sing it back right this second, desperate to please and eager to impress, and the other half that can only communicate that they recognise the short vocalisation by screaming with all their might.  

Keith’s hidden in the shadows at the back of the stage and Lance watches a secret, golden smile spread across his face as a chuckle escapes him. His hair is already sticking to his face around the temples and he’s flushed right across both cheeks, his chest is practically pitching upwards with his every breath, and Lance has never loved him more. 

“Let me hear you do it!” Shiro commands pointing both arms into the crowd and a ghostly, echoing warble rises from the mass in front of him, somehow deafening and distant all at once.

There’s something so indescribably beautiful about these moments. Lance has felt it before at concerts, when he’s been amongst the crowd and completely forgotten why he’s there -- forgotten that the people on that stage, those tiny little figures in the distance, are any sort of celebrity or special in any way -- because he’s just so taken with the people around him. In the way they are one, in the way that race and gender and ideology fall away in the name of creating something. It’s uniting. It’s eery. It’s hope. He can only imagine how Allura feels, sitting there and hearing her little vocal riff played back to her in the voice of thousands of strangers. That’s got to be one hell of a feeling. 

“Now when you hear that, I need you to pick it up and run with it. Keep it going, just loop it, all the way to the end of the song. Allura will be with you the whole time,” Shiro’s still saying.

“Fuck yeah, I will!” Allura shouts, drumsticks thrust into the air in a single fist. The crowd screams her name in reply.

“Now are you ready?” shouts Shiro. Lance’s own endorphins jump at the crowd’s response, and what he’s getting can only be a tiny portion of what the band feels. “Here we go. This is  _ Flayed _ !”

And, just like that, Matt’s guitar rips through the air. It whips out across the stage and over the heads of the audience like cracks of lightning. 

Keith’s head is down, face hidden from the crowd by his hair but piercings afire in the artificial lights, bobbing his head, fingers running through the hard and fast bassline of the opening. He’s so close Lance can see his bottom lip between his teeth and the grin that’s pulling at the corners of his mouth. And Lance is just standing there, numb with the endorphins, Pidge’s fingers crushed in his grip, with the hugest, dopiest grin on his face. This feeling is unreal. Is this what Keith feels every time he steps on stage? God, no wonder he wants to play so bad. 

> _ Bright lights, loud streets, strangers on the subway _
> 
> _ I know you could forget me where I lay. _
> 
> _ But that don’t make it better in the long term. _
> 
> _ It don’t matter if you stand firm. _
> 
> _ ‘Cause I can feel it settle in my lungs _
> 
> _ We’re all fighting for just another day. _

Shiro’s voice stomps the guitar into submission, crisp and clipped just like it is on the album. Except it’s not like the album at all. Suddenly the studio version of  _ Flayed  _ sounds like a hospital; sterile and scheduled and dead. And this is so alive. It’s unpredictable and dirty, kicking up ash in its path, completely and totally unstoppable. It’s a forest fire. It can go anywhere it damn well pleases and it’d be hell to get in its way. 

> _ So maybe I’m tired _
> 
> _ Maybe I’m done _
> 
> _ Maybe it’s over before it’s even begun. _
> 
> _ But I’ll be whoever-- _
> 
> _ Whatever you need me to be _
> 
> _ Just don’t expect it when it’s just you and me. _

He can hear the crowd now, dulled as they are by how close he is to the speakers. Maybe it’s because they’ve given up entirely on singing. They scream the chorus, belt it out with every cubic centimetre of air in their lungs because for this brief moment the band, their idols, those untouchable people, are close enough to touch. They can be part of the same thing, help to build the same thing those inhuman humans are building. And, goddamnit, nobody’s going to give up the chance for that. Keith’s stepped forward to his mic as well for his part in the harmony. And, maybe it’s only Lance’s imagination, but it looks like he glances over into the wings for half a moment, wry smile in his eyes and silken words falling from his lips.

They hit the end of the bridge and Allura starts up the voices, her own coming out with little puffs of effort as she batters her drums. It builds, layer upon layer until it’s a tsunami crashing against the stage. It’s almost enough to restore Lance’s faith in humanity as a whole — these voices; this tide. 

_ Look at this. Look at what we’re capable of if we all work together for once! _

Keith is visibly holding back his own euphoria now as his mouth wraps around the harmony of the final chorus. 

Pidge might have made an attempt to retrieve her hand from Lance’s vice-grip and he’d never know at all. He’s practically shaking by this point, impervious to all but the energy rolling off the crowd and the undiluted joy that Keith radiates. 

 

And when the show finally winds down, after he’s physically lifted a sweat-soaked and weary Keith into the air the second he steps into the wings just so he can spin him around in a circle, after they’ve all gotten completely and utterly wasted in the bar down the street, after Lance has dragged an equally eager Keith back into his bed-- when they’re lying there in the dark, sticky and sated as Lance’s temperamental radiator attempts to click and clunk its way to warmth, Lance finally feels his heart calm for the first time all night.

“You…” he whispers, lips moving against the top of Keith’s head and hair on his teeth, before he runs out of words.

“Hmm?” mumbles Keith, fingers busy tracing invisible patterns over Lance’s bare stomach. 

Lance shakes his head, words still eluding him. “You… are… You’re just incredible, Keith. Talented.” He twists his neck to plant a kiss against Keith’s temple. “Amazing.” He kisses his brow. Keith’s hand begins to lose interest in scraping his nails across Lance’s guts and through his happy-trail and starts a slow migration north. “ _ Incredible _ .” A kiss to the bridge of his nose. Keith’s hand comes to rest against Lance’s jaw. “Perfection.” 

And Lance doesn’t quite place the last kiss. Just hovers his lips a millimetre from Keith’s, feeling his breath come shallow and humid, grinning like the little shit he is when Keith grumbles impatiently and juts his chin out to try and catch them. He pulls his face back only enough to remain free and Keith pouts. He straight up pouts. Lance is weak so he gives in. 

“And you, you ass,” Keith grumbles, not willing to move more than a finger’s breadth away in case Lance decides to prohibit lip-contact again, “are the sun.”

“Why? Because I get in the way when you’re driving and wake you up too early in the morning?”

Lance’s grin comes with too many teeth and Keith shoves him -- punches his shoulder, really -- onto his back where he can pin him down and wipe the smug look off his face. He can feel him there beneath him, then. All silken skin and boney hips. And Lance isn’t grinning anymore, there’s too much surprise still on his face.

“I was going to say ‘a necessity for life’,” says Keith. “But sure. Let’s go with that.”

He can feel Lance’s breath leave his lungs all at once, watch some great, unknown understanding wash over his face and his eyes grow glassy. 

“Shit, Keith,” he whispers. “You can’t just say stuff like that.” 

Keith feels him tug at the wrists he’s pinned to the bed and lets them go. Lance uses them to trace Keith’s face with his fingertips. He swirls spirals over his cheekbones with his thumbs, tucks a stray lock behind an ear, smooths out the lines that are beginning to form between Keith’s eyebrows from all his perpetual frowning, and then buries them in his thick mop of hair. All the while, Keith is struggling to read the expression on his face; one part disbelief, one part awe, and one part something that looks painfully like hurt.

“Those are dangerous words,” Lance continues. “I had to get up before dawn today. You’ve been prepping for the show all day. Then there  _ was  _ the show… We’re both physically and emotionally exhausted. I doubt I’m up for round two.”

The half-laugh has escaped Keith before he can stop it. And, sure, he can absolutely still feel Lance naked and sticky beneath him -- a seemingly endless span of tan skin, wiry muscle, and far too much leg -- but somehow this moment doesn’t feel sexual in the slightest. Keith is far too warm and safe and content here to possibly want anything more from it. So he just scoffs with a smile and a roll of his eyes. 

“Idiot,” he mutters and Lance smiles too, settling his hands on the small of Keith’s back.

“Alright. Message received,” he laughs. “I’m still going to kiss you, though.”

“Knock yourself out,” Keith replies, lips already brushing against Lance’s.

 

***

 

“Look at this.” Lance smiles sleepily to Keith as they lean against the side of the bus a few hours later on a grey New York morning, the sea mist still rolling in and the fog not having lifted yet. “You’re willing to hold my hand in public. This is progress.”

Keith just looks at him out of the corner of his eye. “Do you want me to let go?”

Lance yelps and clutches at Keith’s hand with both of his and Keith laughs. Or… well… as close as anyone can get to a laugh when they’re awake and hungover so goddamn early in the morning. Lance is probably going to be late, even still, and Plax might have his head, but it’ll be worth it to see Keith off to his next stop on the tour. 

Pidge and Hunk, her very grumpy chauffeur for the morning, are nearby talking to a Matt who is far too energetic for anyone’s liking. Pidge seems to be punching him in the arm with every word that comes out of her mouth. Allura and Shiro stand further off, discussing logistics with a roadie. Which leaves Lance and Keith alone except for each other, beside the bus, not feeling as if they can go in out of the cold just yet but with nothing else to do. 

“Are you going to give me a goodbye kiss, at least?” says Lance, letting his head drop onto Keith’s shoulder and closing his eyes.

Keith gives a noncommittal hum but pats his hair comfortingly and Lance will take what he can get as he clings as tightly as he can to the hand in his grasp and desperately ignores how empty the apartment waiting at home for him is. 

They don’t speak again for a long while. Just lean into each other’s space — for either warmth or affection or a combination of the two — as Allura directs the crew with terrifying efficiency and the bus is packed. As Pidge decides the outside world is too cold after all and climbs into the front of Hunk’s sweater, dragging the collar down to stick her face out. Hunk, for his part, doesn’t make a complaint except a passing comment about stretching the fabric. 

The sun rises higher in the sky, the mist begins to clear. Lance will be late to work for sure now. And finally the bus is loaded, the tour crew pile into their own minibus, the theatre crew from last night’s show scurry back inside to their hot coffees and central heating, and the band prepare to leave. 

Keith is the last to board, as hesitant to leave as Lance is to see him go. And he just stands for a good long while at the foot of the steps up onto the bus, his hand warmed in both of Lance’s, staring at the ground and trying to think of something appropriate to say. Because this is a beginning, an end and a repeat all in one. He’s leaving. That’s a fact. Sure, this is a lot better than their last goodbye but they’re still going their separate ways. So it’s the same all over again. There’s that fear of another six years hovering over them. There’s the pain of physical separation. But at the same time, everything is different. Because there’s something… something almost  _ hopeful _ that hangs in the air between them. A restart. An adventure into something new. This time, for sure, they’ll do things right. Keith is ready to fight the whole world for it. 

“You will actually call me this time, right?” Lance says. He’s smiling but Keith isn’t ready to dismiss that glimmer of something else in the back of his eyes just yet. 

He squeezes the fingers in his grip with all the reassurance he can muster. “Of course.”

Lance nods, glances up into the bus where the others are waiting, and then nods again. He’s stalling, they both know it, but neither are going to point it out. 

“Well…” Keith says eventually, gesturing awkwardly over his shoulder and Lance nods yet again.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, of course.”

And so Keith turns, drops Lance’s hand, and steps up into the bus with a stiff little wave.

“Keith!” Lance shouts a second later and Keith’s head immediately pops out from around the corner.

“Yes?”

Lance waves him closer, conspiratorial smile on his face. Keith, knowing Lance well enough by now to be suspicious, cautiously approaches and, the moment he’s close enough, still two stairs up into the bus, Lance grabs his collar and pulls him down for a bruising kiss. 

“For the record,” he says, breath misting against Keith’s face, grinning with anxious eyes, “we’re definitely dating this time.”

 

***

 

New York. The city of dreams. The Big Apple. The city that never sleeps. City of international acclaim  _ and  _ intrigue. A melting pot of people and cultures where immigrants and old-money, fat white men can rub elbows on the street. The five boroughs, each with their own characters. The gridded streets and clotted, steamy roads, the towering buildings and too-busy-for-you locals. When the world thinks ‘America’ they think: New York-- Actually, they’re more likely to think ‘poor healthcare’ and ‘gun violence’ first but then they’ll think: New York. It can mean ten thousand different things to ten thousand different people. And inside this sprawling city that swallows all that dares to even brush against it, in an entirely ordinary (but really quite shady) corner of Brooklyn, in an entirely ordinary apartment building, in a run-down studio, Lance McClain, for the first time ever, is thinking that his apartment is too big. 

He’s fairly certain he’s never felt so alone. No staring out at the infinity of the night sky or the seemingly endless expanse of the ocean can emphasise your insignificance quite like standing in your own living room with the sounds of all your neighbours carrying on with their lives irregardless of your actions coming through the walls. He could be dead in here and they wouldn’t even notice until he started to stink. 

Of course that’s a crazy way to think. His family would notice, his friends would notice-- fuck it, at the very  _ least _ , his work would notice if he just suddenly fell off the face of the planet. He’s only feeling like this because he can still see the physical holes Keith left in his life -- the hook on the coat-rack where he’d hang his shit, the bowl he ate breakfast out of that morning still sitting in the sink, the corner where he’d leave his bass still empty for that purpose -- and it’s leaving him feeling like a well loved couch, butt imprint etched into it forever. He needs his butt. The missing piece to his puzzle. Without him, Lance is just a lumpy couch.

He takes a deep breath and fixes his eyes out the window, at the wall of the building next door, not even seeing the apartment, all its missing pieces and empty spots. Then he lets it out again and hangs his coat up on Keith’s vacant hook, just to fill the space. 

 

***

 

_ “Shiro. Hey, Shiro!” _

The camera pans across the hotel room to reveal Shiro lying face down across the bed, arms spread and feet dangling off the side. He doesn’t reply.

_ “Where are we right now, Shiro?” _

He does say something this time but his words are swallowed by the mattress and all that comes out is a muffled, ‘Oo-oh-aireear.’ Allura’s voice giggles behind the camera.

_ “Say it again with your face out of the bed.” _

He rolls over, making it seem like the biggest ordeal possible; groaning and arms trembling under his body weight, head thrown back like, even then, he still needs the momentum of a good head-chuck to get him over. He makes it to his side and then stops.

“You know where we--” he says before he frowns at her. “What are you doing?”

_ “I’m making a video tour journal.” _

“Starting halfway through the tour?”

_ “Well, this is when I thought of the idea so this is when we’re starting it. So, where are we right now?” _

“We’re in Philly. The show is the day after tomorrow and I got up at four this morning so all I want to do is sleep right now.”

“ _ You’re no fun, Shiro.” _

“Not on five hours sleep, I’m not. But just let me take a nap. Six-hours-sleep-Shiro is a barrel of monkeys-- wait, that’s a kid’s game. I meant ‘barrel of laughs’.”

Allura bursts out into a cackle -- a restrained, lady-like one, thank you very much, concealed behind her hand -- just as the door slams open and Matt bursts into the room. The video smears as Allura whirls around to face him. 

“Party in Shiro and Allura’s room!” he shouts and they both glare at him in response. “No but seriously, what’s up? I had to retreat from my room. Keith is on the phone with Lance and things got way steamier than I was comfortable with real quick.” Then he takes a running leap onto Shiro’s bed, landing butt-first and bouncing the poor guy with a lurch. 

“Allura’s filming a thing,” says Shiro when he’s settled again. 

_ “Actually we’re meant to be getting ready to leave. We’ve got a radio spot in about two hours.” _

Shiro just sighs and silently bids his nap farewell.

Matt slaps him on the back. “Come on, lead-vocalist-slash-face-of-the-band. You’re expected at these things. You taking Allura?” Shiro nods. “I’ll come too, then. I want to give Keith time to clean up in there before I’m willing to brave it again.”

“Are they flirting or fighting?” mumbles Shiro.

“You know, it’s honestly hard to tell sometimes,” Matt grumbles back.

 

***

 

It’s a close up of Allura’s face. So close you can only see from her nose to her eyebrows. So close you can see where her lash extensions meld into her natural lashes. But focus isn’t on her nose or her lashes. Her eyes claim every ounce of attention, in all their kaleidoscopic glory. 

“It’s day… I-don’t-remember of the tour, day twenty-one of the tour journal,” she says like the narrator in a zombie movie. “The day of our Chicago show. AKA the day Matt woke up with a horrendous breakout and is too shy to get up on stage with a face full of spots.”

_ “Don’t tell them that!”  _ Matt insists from off camera, voice cracking a little, and Allura laughs, flipping her phone around to show him walking backwards in front of her through a mall. His arms are still flung in the air in embarrassed outrage. “We could have kept pretending my skin is always naturally flawless!”

Keith yawns beside her and Allura pans across to him as he reaches into his hair to scratch absentmindedly at his scalp. He double takes as he notices the phone pointed at his face.

“Hey, don’t look at me. I’m only here because I was promised coffee in exchange for ‘just a really quick stop at Sephora. It’ll only take a minute, I promise’.” His voice goes high in the worst fake English accent imaginable as he imitates his friend. 

Allura punches him in the arm for it, camera shaking as she does, and he laughs. She flips the camera back around to her face.

“Basically we’re going to Sephora to get something to hide Matt’s face,” she says, teeth a gleaming white in her smile.

 

_ “We’re definitely going to want the green one.”  _ Allura’s rolling two little glass cylinders of concealer around in her hand.  _ “Because, no offense, but that one on your chin is hella red. Of course, we gotta get a plain-old regular concealer. And we should probably-- lend me your face for a minute. You’ve got a fuck-ton of purple-ish scarring and it kind of depends on your skin tone whether a peach or an orange corrector is better for that. Here, hold this.” _

There’s a lot of shaking as the phone passes from Allura’s hands to Matt’s before it focuses on his face and the back of her head. 

“Shit, Allura. You planning on starting your own beauty vlog or something?” he says, eyes darting worriedly down at where she’s smearing peach and orange coloured paste onto the back of her hand.

“You already know I totally could,” she replies confidently. “And it would be ama--” She stops.

Matt looks at her for a second. “What is it?”

“Where the fuck is Keith?”

Matt turns to look over his shoulder, camera dipping to point at nothing in particular the second he’s no longer concentrating on it. “Ah, fuck. We’ve lost Keith. I guess this is just what happens when you take a Keith into somewhere so far out of his natural habitat as Sephora. He’ll be wandering the white-lit, brightly coloured aisles forever -- wearing eyeshadow like warrior’s body-paint and hunting teenage girls for food.” He turns back to Allura and shrugs. “Oh well, nothing we can do now.”

There’s half a second of silence where it’s almost possible to  _ hear _ Allura rolling her eyes. Then she grabs Matt by the wrist. “Come on. I know he was with us somewhere around  _ Drunk Elephant. _ ”

They find Keith squatting down in front of the  _ Sunday Riley _ display. 

“I know this thing,” he says, holding a tiny bottle up, before they can get out a word.

_ “What? _ ” Matt squeaks from behind the camera. He sounds a little like the world as he knows it has come to an end. And if Keith -- uses bar-soap on his face, never exfoliated in his life,  _ Keith _ \-- recognises a high-end skincare product then, shit, he’s not exactly wrong. 

“Lance has some,” Keith supplies and the world rights itself again. That makes a lot more sense. “Fucking hell. This is-- have you seen this price? 158 bucks for one tiny bottle?  _ Lance! _ ” He looks skyward like a pious man and Lance is the god he’s praying to. “Just how much of your income are you spending on…” He spins the bottle in his hand to see the label. “Uh… ‘All-in-one lactic acid treatment’?”

Allura laughs and squats down next him. “You know, Keith…” she teases, “you have $158  _ and  _ you’re not making a teacher’s salary. Imagine how happy he’d be if you just… you know… took care of that expense for him? You could even get him a couple other things? If you wanted? Make him a care package?”

Keith’s eyes go wide like they did when he realised that being an adult meant not having to eat all his vegetables before desert.

“What’s his skin type?” asks Allura, grinning deviously. 

“Uh, brown? Or maybe not quite brown. Like a darkish tan?” Keith replies. 

“No, I meant: what’s his skin’s condition?”

“Soft?”

The camera is shaking as Matt trembles with repressed laughter. It’s the entirely serious, confused little tilt of the head that’s getting to him. Not even Matt’s so clueless about the world of skincare addicts. 

“No,” Allura says again slowly. “Is it, like, oily? Or dry? Or sensitive? Dehydrated? A little bit of everything?”

“Uh…” He glares at the bottle in his hand as if it’s withholding the answer from him. The baby oil incident comes to mind. “Dry?”

Ten minutes later, they’re all loaded up with a small fortune worth of beauty products.

“To the post office!” Matt declares.

_ “We’ve got to pay for it first, dingus.”  _ Allura has her phone back again.

“To the register and then  _ to the post office _ !”

 

***

 

Allura sticks her phone out of her bunk on the bus, just shoves her whole hand out of the closed curtains, and sweeps it back and forth like she’s in danger of being sniped and needs to scope out the area while remaining in cover. It’s just a regular bus, though. The ceiling is a little low and the skinny aisle runs between a dozen or so minuscule bunks, stacked three high in the cramped space and with so little head-room they feel more like coffins than beds. But, in every other respect, this could be a regular bus.

_ “How boring. There’s no one here.” _

She sighs and rolls out of bed, brushing the curtains aside, heading for the ladder out of this hellish dormitory and into the main area. 

She speaks in a plastic, falsely cheery voice. Like a flight attendant with nothing left to live for. “ _ You asked for it and we delivered! Ever wanted to know what it’s like to be a touring musician? Well how about a day in the life of  _ Castle of Lions?  _ Here it comes folks!”  _ Then back to her usual cadence. “ _ I’m not doing the whole day, bee-tee-dubs. There’s just not a lot going on right now and I figured ‘why not?’. So I’ll probably just film for twenty minutes or so. Sorry if it’s boring but that’s what this is like. Anyway, come say hi to the fam.” _

The camera bounces with her steps as she flounces through the bus. Most rooms barely get a cursory glance. Not that there’s much to them. You could probably smack your knees on the wall while sitting on the toilet. The kitchen is a sink, a single burner stove and a fuckton of spilled food stains that noone has bothered to clean yet. She just walks straight through the room with the actual bus seats. They’re not interesting enough for even a sentence of commentary. 

Shiro is napping-- well,  _ attempting  _ to nap on the miniature lounge, his feet dangling off the end and eye mask askew on his face. His only response is to flip her the bird when Allura tries to engage him in conversation. Then he rolls over and steadfastly ignores her. 

Keith is in what can only be described as the ‘living room’ but, considering this is still a bus, that’s definitely being generous. It’s one couch (more like a padded bench built into the floor), that mediocre kitchen, and a TV. That miniature toilet? The smallest cubicle in existence? It’s just crammed into the room, cuts a corner out of the perfect square it could have been, like someone forgot to add it to the design until the very last minute. But Keith doesn’t seem to care in the slightest. He’s made himself at home, comfortable and smiling at his laptop, sprawled across the couch with his legs dangled over the back and up onto a windowsill. 

He’s talking to Lance. Because of course he is. He doesn’t seem to have stopped talking to Lance since they left New York. Actually, that’s not quite true. But when he’s not talking to Lance, he’s talking  _ about  _ Lance. Either way there’s no escaping him for the rest of the band. And, for the most part, that’s fine. That’s great. Excellent. It’s kind of incredible to see Keith so happy and open and willing to be vulnerable. It’s rare. And any teasing he may have suffered (most likely from Matt) is quickly shut down by one stern look from Shiro. His baby brother is smiling and heaven help anyone who does anything to change that. 

But it’s so goddamn tempting to tease. 

When he says shit like, ‘You know, Lance is having chicken tonight. We should get chicken,’ completely unprompted and straight-faced as the band are heading into town, wherever they happen to be that night. Or when he goes to Matt for meme advice because he hasn’t heard from Lance all day and he’s sure it’s because he’s feeling down, hoping a choice meme will cheer him up again. Or when he mumbles his name in his sleep. They’re all just cause for a teasing remark. Please, it’ll only be a little one and all in good humour. But Shiro is always there, sending a supportive smile in Keith’s direction and an ice-cold glare in everyone else’s. 

Lance is the one to spot her first, his face shifting into a grin and waving to her from his tiny screen. 

“Allura! Baby! How ya going? Looking foxy as ever, I see,” he says and Keith whips his head around to see her coming through the door. 

Allura laughs. “ _ Careful there, Lance, or I’ll start trying to steal you for myself.” _

“No!” Lance squeals, clutching his arms around himself protectively. “Keith! Help! Don’t let her take me!”

Keith just scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Alright, calm down now.”

Allura settles onto the armrest of the couch, phone still pointed at the laptop. “ _ So, what are we up to this fine Saturday?” _ she asks.

Lance hoists a page up to his webcam, any writing on it reduced to dark smudges by the poor quality of the video-of-a-video. “Just marking. You?”

_ “We’re waiting for Matt to stop chundering everywhere so we can get on the road again.” _

“Chundering?” Lance mouths silently, shooting Keith a questioning look. 

_ “How’s he looking, by the way? _ ” Allura carries on, oblivious to Lance’s confusion.

Keith just jerks a thumb to the window. Matt’s curled over the guardrail, hurling his guts up somewhere along the I-5, in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere. 

_ “Ew _ ,” says Allura.

“I did try to warn those idiots,” says Keith. “It’s a bad idea to see who can chug a gallon of milk the fastest. That’s the kind of data that does not need collecting, I don’t care what Matt says. The only reason Shiro isn’t out there with him is because he’s the weeny who wouldn’t come out drinking with us last night.”

“Oh my god,” Lance whispers.

Allura just puts her head in her hands. “ _ Alcohol and dangerous quantities of milk. We’re working with children. Children with drinking permits. We were doomed from the start.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really don't know how I feel about this chapter. It kind of started strong and then just faded out... That's why I wanted it to go with the next chapter! But the word count would have been somewhere around 10,000 and that's just too much for one chapter... so we've got this strangely paced one.  
> The lyrics were actually one of the first things I wrote for this fic and we'd kind of gotten this far and I hadn't even referenced them so I just kind of jammed them in there and... hoped for the best, I guess. Hopefully they work okay? Let me know.
> 
> As always, you're incredible and I love you all. I've read all your comments, they're great and you're great and I don't think I can communicate the sincerity with which I am thanking you. Really, thanks fam. Ya'll great and I hope you enjoy the new album as much as I have so far (really digging 'Encore' of the new, not-released-as-singles tracks). 
> 
> I've only got a couple thousand words of the next chapter down and my brain keeps adding more and more scenes that I want to put in so... I don't know when I'll have it ready for you. Hopefully soon. Until then!

**Author's Note:**

> So. How are we doing?  
> Who even is Honey!Keith when he's not dirt-poor? Being completely and totally broke was a good 30% of his character....
> 
> Updates are every two days (hopefully.... we'll see with the last chapter)
> 
> Till then,  
> Ocean.
> 
> [writing/art tumblr](https://thecowardlycreative.tumblr.com/)  
> [VLD sideblog](https://vlddump.tumblr.com/)  
> And, don’t forget, if you like what I do you can always [buy me a kofi?](https://ko-fi.com/U7U2GBKM) I will love you forever, I promise.


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